The Changing Nature of Work: 30 signals to consider for a sustainable future

SIGNAL 25. The rise of start-ups

The entrepreneurial spirit is indubitably a driving force for creativity and innovation. Market demand and tough competition continuously push entrepreneurs to come up with new products and better solutions. Start-up founders are also entrepreneurs, but with the ambitious, overarching goal to create a product or a service to create radical change. This attitude brings start-ups both at the forefront of the innovation industry and enable them to set new trends shaping the future of work.

Being the creators of products and services aimed to disrupt traditional systems and way of life, start-up founders are among the first who adopted new organizational structures and practices. For instance, connectivity tools, the use of cloud platforms, and interaction via digital collaboration tools certainly impacted the level of flexibility and inclusion at the workplace. Moreover, according to a survey conducted among the members of the UK-based start-up network Founders Forum, start-up employees were better prepared for the pandemic and demonstrated a high level of resilience towards lockdowninduced working conditions, because they were not really ‘new’ for them. Over half of the respondents revealed that they were able to keep a high level of productivity and accomplish the tasks.

Although a new generation of entrepreneurs and investors seems to be at the edge of shaping the future of work in terms of the organizational approach, their vision goes far beyond technology. Many start-ups are focused on mission-driven modalities aimed at creating business models able to tackle the most burning social challenges globally, giving rise to social entrepreneurship. In the past decade, the number of investors and venture funds that prioritize start-ups in the social domain has been steadily growing, creating opportunities for new organizations to grow and to hire more employees who prioritize meaningfulness over other indicators of job satisfaction. This explains the rise of a recent trend called ‘zebra start-ups’. Zebras, contrary to ‘unicorns’ (startups with a valuation of $1 billion) prioritize the value of the impact over the financial deal with investors, creating another important development vector for the future of work to be considered.

Overall, the spread of the start-up culture globally and perpetual interest of capital ventures and individual investors in this phenomenon emphasize the importance of analysing the start-up business model and reapplying best practices across other types of organizations.

Check out the next signal, #26: Access to financial resources.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Changing Nature of Work: 30 signals to consider for a sustainable future

Work helps sustain livelihoods and largely determines the quality of life. Its changing nature is at the frontier of development. This report is the result of a broad horizon scanning by six UNDP Accelerator Labs across Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.  They reveal 30 signals that shape the “where, who, how, and why” of the changing nature of work. From the impact of COVID-19 on the workforce to new work models and entrepreneurial ecosystems, the authors explore opportunities and threats, as well as solutions from local contexts that can be scaled up into positive answers to the challenges people around the world are facing. Download the full report here.