Uber-ized future business: From control economy to negotiation economy

A cooler job than Internet product manager, Wall Street analyst and startup CXO has emerged: being an Uber driver.

This is not as simple as a fashionable part-time job, although Tang Yan, the founder of Momo, works as an Uber driver. It may be able to solve a problem that management guru Peter F. Drucker devoted himself to exploring in his later years: how to manage knowledge workers, or how can knowledge workers achieve self-management?

The New York Times said that in the future we will most likely work like Uber drivers. This is not just about the job of taxi drivers, but "just like Uber's impact on the taxi industry, emerging technology has the potential to divide a large number of traditional jobs into independent tasks and distribute them when needed. The corresponding remuneration will be determined dynamically by supply and demand, and the performance of each worker will be constantly tracked, evaluated and subject to strict customer satisfaction supervision from time to time."

The biggest benefit of Uberization is that technology will make our work life more flexible, allowing us to arrange one or more jobs according to our own time, rather than arranging our time according to the work.

Think about it, many industries can be Uberized, such as express delivery, legal services, consulting, etc. The performance evaluation of consultants can be more directly linked to the evaluation of the clients they serve, and they can arrange their working hours according to the needs of the clients and improve the response speed. At the same time, each individual can instantly calculate the salary return they can get for each order.

It is particularly suitable for this knowledge economy era that requires collaboration, sharing, and free association. From steam engines to electricity, industrial economic revolutions have liberated work from limited manpower, thereby improving production efficiency; Uberization is to liberate people from work and give them more rights to create, think, and enjoy life.

Improving manufacturing efficiency can be achieved through the evolution of machines, but improving the efficiency of distribution and collaboration requires a revolution in the system organization mechanism and the way information flows. Uberization will be a kind of management evolution, management in the Internet age.

It reflects what I think is the wonderful thing about management in the Internet era. It is no longer command and control, but negotiation and sharing; it is not the top leader in the organization who decides everyone's direction of action and rewards and punishments. There is no God, and the evaluation you get comes directly from the users you serve. It is a complete flat management: everyone has equal opportunities - borrowing a classic line from the American TV series "Game of Thrones": All mortals need to serve.

It is different from the crowdsourcing trend that has emerged since the 1990s. Crowdsourcing still has a designer of the rules of the game, who stipulates the work goals, sets post-event rewards, and acts as an evaluator. In short, God exists. It is more like a game of grabbing seats, and the winners are a few. Uberization creates game rules that are more like an interface protocol like TCP/IP. In this system, the work goals are dynamic, fleeting, and high-frequency transactions. Everyone can participate in the game equally, and the winners are everyone.

Uber-like business may change many of our life concepts, such as making your income less predictable, making long-term employment less secure, and making people forget what it means to build a lifelong career. But it will create a greater result: it will create a free association of free people.

This is the true Internetization, not just Internet+.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.