If you have to cut loose...
Jinfo Blog

By Tim Buckley Owen

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If you’re wondering whether the time might be approaching when you’re forced to go it alone, here’s some reassurance that may help. Many of the best businesses started during a recession, and there do seem to be opportunities for information freelancers – but you may need to think carefully about what you take away when you and your employer do finally part company.

General Motors, AT&T, Disney and MTV are among successful companies founded during recessions, according to a recent Economist article. Scarce credit and a shrinking economy hardly constitute an inviting environment for start-ups – but on the other hand finding a way of providing a service more cheaply may be a winner when people have less money to spend.

One development that could benefit new entrepreneurs is the socialisation of business. In a recent posting for the Business Information Industry Association, Gertjan Kaart of the credit reporting firm Graydon Netherlands suggested that the credit industry’s traditional focus on “experts and professionals” may have locked out the crowdsourced wisdom that might have provided some answers in the credit crisis.

Information sage David Worlock goes further, holding up science publisher Elsevier as an exemplar of social activity because it understands that science goes forward by many players, large and small, acting together. “If developers can find, under the Elsevier technology umbrella, a way of exposing their talents and earning from them … then another business model extension has been made,” he says.

So where might the opportunities for information entrepreneurs lie? Some clues can be gleaned from the latest online employment report from Elance, a service that helps businesses hire and manage freelancers in the cloud.

Elance sees opportunities in compliance, customer relationship management, business writing, research, social media marketing and database skills, to mention just a few. The United States remains the top hiring country, but the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland are catching up fast.

Many of these elancers’ skills will have been honed in employment – so how much of that are you entitled to take away with you when you cut loose? Possibly not as much as Noah Kravitz is reported to have done when he resigned from mobile technology specialist PhoneDog and apparently took his Twitter account with him.

According to CNN, PhoneDog is suing former product reviewer Kravitz for changing the handle on his Twitter account from @PhoneDog_Noah to @noahkravitz instead of abandoning it altogether. Kravitz claimed that it was only because he mixed the personal with business that it gained the following it did in the first place.

It remains to be seen who wins on this one, but the lesson is clear. If you and your employer divorce, how clean a break is it?

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