"Fast, Cheap, and Under Control"
The future of work does not seem to rest with the "guru" or "generalized" style skill set we're often stuck on as entrepreneurs and employees. It even goes beyond the "niche" mindset in some ways. For better or for worse (and there are great arguments on both sides), it looks like "hyperspecialization" is the way your current job, your current gig, or the job/gig you want is headed.
I am seeing this (re) phenomenon and experiencing it firsthand in a few ways/for a number of reasons:
1. Complicated tasks are broken up into relatively simple parts to accommodate multiple skill levels (i.e., updating information across multiple databases)
2. There are still many forms of work that cannot be automated or feasibly outsourced in some cases.
3. Sometimes simple tasks need to be supplemented with more complex information (i.e., adding multiple types of information to a database that has to feed into an inventory application for a brick and mortar store)
4. Sometimes accuracy has to be guaranteed for tasks without a small business hiring extra workers to accomplish this (i.e., increasing the workload of employees and contractors without overloading them).
Well, those are my views anyway. Here's what the Harvard Business Review had to say:
Much of the prosperity our world now enjoys comes from the productivity gains of dividing work into ever smaller tasks performed by ever more specialized workers. Today, thanks to the rise of knowledge work and communications technology, this subdivision of labor has advanced to a point where the next difference in degree will constitute a difference in kind. We are entering an era of hyperspecialization—a very different, and not yet widely understood, world of work.
The term “hyperspecialization” is not synonymous with outsourcing work to other companies or distributing it to other places (as in offshoring), although it is facilitated by the same technologies. Rather, it means breaking work previously done by one person into more-specialized pieces done by several people. Whether or not those pieces are outsourced or distributed, their separation often leads to improvements in quality, speed, and cost.
