A new generation of online service marketplaces is giving small companies more opportunities than ever to find specialized expertise and affordable labor. Main Street businesses can shop a virtual international bazaar of freelancers to recruit computer programmers in Russia, graphic designers in San Francisco or data analysts in India.

“This is one more step in the path to leveling the playing field between small and large businesses,” said Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of “The Future of Work” (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). “A small-business person in a company of one can look to the world like a very large company and have access to all kinds of services — and that’s largely because of this kind of model.”

These online marketplaces are fueled by several trends. The recession and recent wave of downsizing have forced many corporations to eliminate in-house services and use independent contractors instead. Buyouts and layoffs have pushed many skilled professionals into the freelance marketplace.

Meanwhile, technological advances make remote work and virtual teams more feasible. Business processes are allowing companies to mix and match services with more ease than ever. An array of freelance marketplaces are making services tradable online, much as eBay and Craigslist made goods tradable a decade ago. These sites include general freelance marketplaces (Guru, Elance, ITMatchOnline, oDesk) and others offering specialties like software (Rent A Coder), personal assistants (virtualassistants.com), graphics (99designs), or creative services (CrowdSpring). Read more…

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