As companies struggle with chronic skills shortages and changing labor demographics, a new generation of talent platforms, offering on-demand access to highly trained workers, has begun to help. These platforms include marketplaces for premium expertise (such as Toptal and Catalant), for freelance workers (Upwork and 99designs), and for crowd­sourcing innovation (Kaggle and InnoCentive). Almost all Fortune 500 firms use such platforms. But most do so in an ad hoc, inefficient way, according to a Harvard Business School/BCG study. Companies need to get much more strategic about their engagement with talent platforms and fully embrace their ability to increase labor force flexibility, speed time to market, and facilitate business model innovation. That will require rewiring policies and processes and redefining working norms. Most important, leaders must inspire the cultural shift needed to realize the platforms' transformative potential.

This case describes how caregiving responsibilities influence American employees, firms, and the broader economy. It details how sociodemographic trends in the late 20th century transformed the way that Americans balance their personal and professional lives, analyzing changes such as the evolving role of women in the economy, the rise of non-traditional households, the increasing cost and complexity of healthcare, and the aging and ailing of the U.S. population. The case then reflects on how such changes impact the productivity and profitability of the modern American company. It reviews survey data from employees and employers to understand how caregiving impacts individual careers and firms' profitability. The case concludes by asking readers to "rethink" how care might be provided by employers. It analyzes recent research on the return-on-investment of caregiving benefits, describes ways that firms are expanding their caregiving benefits coverage, and discusses the importance for managers to understand internal "care demographics" and promulgate a culture that supports caregiving.

In the face of a rapidly-changing economy, organiztions that wish to compete in the future of work must develop strategies for acquiring, retaining, and developing talent for their organizations. This primer reviews the major trends shaping jobs, workplaces, and worker demographics. It then discusses many of the largest weaknesses in traditional talent management systems. The case then closes by describing how firms can create "talent management pipelines." In this framework, firms' core asset - talent - is subjected to the same quality-management proceudres that revolutionized global supply chain practices in the 20th century.

In 2018, the Project on Managing the Future of Work at HBS teamed up with the BCG Henderson Institute to survey 6,500 business leaders and 11,000 workers about the various forces reshaping the nature of work. The responses revealed a surprising gap: While the executives were pessimistic about their employees' ability to acquire the capabilities needed to thrive in an era of rapid change, the employees were not. The employees were actually focused on the benefits change would bring and far more eager to learn new skills than their leaders gave them credit for. This gap highlights a vast reserve of talent and energy firms can tap into: their own workers. How can a company do that? By creating a learning culture; engaging employees in the transition instead of shepherding them through it; developing an internal talent pipeline for the entire workforce; and collaborating with outside partners to build the right skills in the labor pools it hires from.

By December 2018, entrepreneur Joe DeLoss's fried chicken company, Hot Chicken Takeover, has opened three restaurants in Columbus, Ohio using an unconventional employment model that helps people with criminal records get back on their feet. DeLoss is proud of the supportive employment environment he has cultivated, but wonders how to scale it beyond Columbus.

In 2018, Ann Randazzo, executive director of the Center for Energy Workforce Development (CEWD) is assessing the organization's performance since its 2006 founding. Founded to address an imminent retirement bubble of middle skills workers in the utilities industry, CEWD had since expanded its mission to focus on workforce development initiatives to improve the skills and diversity of the industry's workforce. The group was an example of an industry coming together to collectively address a problem facing all members of the industry.

As this case opens in 2012, a cross-sector alliance to bring new rail transport to the Motor City seems about to collapse, and civic leaders have one last chance to save it. The case covers the rise of Detroit, the city's devastating fall, and the ongoing potential revival of the city. It allows a discussion of what causes cities to thrive and to fail, with a special emphasis on the roles of cross-sector collaboration and transportation infrastructure.