Open Talent: Leveraging the Global Workforce to Solve Your Biggest Challenges

In the new world of work, one thing is clear: the war for talent is over--and talent won.

As the pandemic waned, we returned to sparsely populated offices and empty conference rooms. Our working life had been transformed, seemingly overnight. But the truth is that the ever-growing digital wave has long been breaking down organizational boundaries and increasing open innovation, including the use of crowdsourcing platforms as a talent solution. Now the imperative is clear: adapt to and leverage this new, digitally enabled world of "open talent"--or get left behind.

In this eye-opening, essential guidebook for the new world of work, John Winsor and Jin Paik, leaders at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, show how the massive reset of the pandemic allowed talented workers everywhere to exit their jobs without leaving the workforce. Now some are freelancing for multiple companies or starting small businesses, leaving hiring managers scratching their heads over a workforce gone AWOL. What's more, talent has more power than ever using platforms such as Freelancer.com, Fiverr, and Upwork, setting their own terms for work: what, where, when, and at what price.

How can companies adapt? The key, the authors argue, is shifting to a more "distributed" idea of the organization that revolves around talent (people) and projects, not divisions and offices. In this new model, which the authors call a networked organization, talent is culled from both inside and outside the organization, dispensing with siloed approaches to talent acquisition and instead viewing talent through a single lens: as a global ecosystem that can be tapped as needed.

With rich stories, keen insights, and an abundance of practical advice, Winsor and Paik provide a new framework and operating model for transforming your organization into a talent-orchestrating, problem-solving machine.

John Winsor is a thought leader and global authority on open talent and the future of work. John's ideas, expressed through his writing, speaking, and the companies he has built, have placed him at the intersection of innovation, disruption, and storytelling. He is a leading entrepreneur and adviser in the open-talent space, having launched and sold several companies. John is currently an executive-in-residence at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) and the founder and Chair of Open Assembly, the world's first digital aggregation platform to help organizations reduce friction in the adoption of open talent and freelancing. Recently, John cofounded the Center for the Transformation of Work, a global industry coalition of world leaders in the open-talent and innovation industry, with the goal of revolutionizing the workplace for a billion people by 2025.

Jin H. Paik builds talent models and disruptive technology. He has worked at the intersection of digital transformation, data science and artificial intelligence, and the future of work over the past decade in academia and industry. Currently, he is a research scientist at Harvard Business School and is a cofounder and Managing Partner of Altruistic, a data science consultancy with a crowd of 3,000 experts and a technology development platform. He was the Head of Labs at the Data, Digital, and Design Institute at Harvard, where he developed the institute's strategic vision and directed project and research activities. Previously, he was the founding General Manager and Senior Researcher at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, where he oversaw the development of open innovation programs with NASA, Harvard Medical School, Broad Institute, and other companies, including the execution of 800-plus innovation projects. He has taught in-person and online courses at Harvard. He holds a bachelor's degree from Michigan and a master's degree from Harvard, and he is a doctoral candidate at New York University, investigating innovation and leadership in organizations.

Connect with John Winsor and Jin Paik at johnwinsor.com and lish.harvard.edu.