September 22, 2020 All About Topcoder with CEO Mike Morris – Open Assembly Podcast

Topcoder CEO Mike Morris recently chatted with Open Assembly Founder and CEO John Winsor on the Open Assembly podcast. They discuss how Topcoder got its start, the evolution of crowdsourcing since the company’s founding in 2001, and Mike’s favorite recent customer success story.

Learn more about Open Assembly and check out the conversation and highlights below.

how we work is changing 

Open Assembly is dedicated to advancing the thinking and practical application of open strategies. John Winsor and partners bring more than 30 years of collective experience in thought leadership, entrepreneurship and advising on the study and building of open platforms in private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Open Assembly helps organizations integrate OI into their innovation process, thorough collective membership, content, consulting, and workshops. Open Assembly is helping to co-create the future of work by being the connection for organizations and people wanting to thrive as on-demand talent grows.

Timing is everything 

Timing is a major factor in organizations warming up to a new way of accessing talent, and now seems to be the right time. Both Open Assembly and Topcoder were early champions of crowdsourcing. As John says, “It’s been a long time coming, but it seems like we’ve got a lot of momentum right now.” Mike shares that early on, it was a struggle to get organizations on board with a new way of working. Now with the pandemic, remote work has become the norm and enterprises are shifting their focus from efficiency to resilience. The table is set for the reconfigurable workforce, which can flex and adapt as needs change.

Paul Hlivko, CTO of Wellmark, is one example of a customer who is doing more work with Topcoder during the crisis, due to supply chain disruption from other vendors. Listen to Paul discuss Developing an All-In Talent Strategy to Maximize Enterprise Resiliency on the Uprisor podcast here.

The Future of Work in the Gig Economy 

Mike and John close by talking about what’s next for Topcoder and other platforms shaping the future of work. As enterprise and B2B use of demand talent goes mainstream, the role of HR is evolving alongside it. Mike touches on the need for platforms like Topcoder to “come together to solve some of these health and wealth issues… we’ve got to figure out how to make sure that people have the right amount of financial protections in place.” Mike ends by offering guidance to leaders who may be struggling to get started with on demand talent platforms:

“In order for something like this to take hold, it has to be a top down supported initiative, but it grows through bottom up success. I would look for who’s an up-and-coming leader in my organization that I want to give a path to really impacting the business. That’s going to be somebody that’s willing to take risks, and willing to do things differently, and enable them.” – Mike Morris

 Thanks to John Windsor for having us on the podcast.

Contact us to put on-demand talent to work for your organization. 

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