In the interesting book ‘The Gig Economy‘ by Diane Mulcahy, she describes how we all should develop a diversified portfolio of gigs to succeed in this new economy.
“Diversifying our work reduces our risk, opens up new opportunities, expands our networks, and develops our skills. Diversifying our interests brings balance and variety to our lives and gives us a way to explore our passions, nurture new interests, and satisfy our curiosities.“
Her point is that in this portfolio, we should have profitable gigs and also gigs we don’t do for money – at least for now – and serve as exploration. “They could accomplish personal and professional goals and achieve a balance between money and love, play and work, passion and pragmatism“.
Some of those gigs should be pilots gigs we use as test benches: “Having a portfolio of gigs allows us to create low – risk opportunities to experiment with new ideas and new opportunities. An experimental gig lets us test an opportunity and if we find we don’t like it, we can drop it and try something else. By using gigs to create small pilot tests of opportunities, we create the option to either continue and invest more if it’s successful or stop and move onto something else if it’s not.”
Having a diversified set of interests and activities (gigs) appears to be a key to risk management and success in the new gig economy. What about you? Do you have such a portfolio including some pilot or emerging activities?
