The sharing or collaborative economy can be defined as the social, economic and sustainable system engaged around the experience when people share goods, services or power, by selling, sharing or trading. On the words of Rachel Botsman, MBA professor at Oxford University on collaborative economy, this new system dims out the limits between products and consumers. For example, Uber, the ride-hailing most popular company, currently evaluated in $23.4 billion, is responsible for 1 million trips a day and yet owns absolutely no car. Airbnb, the startup that got famous for a new couch surfing experience, sets an average of half a million stays per night, and yet owns not a single bed.
According to Jessica Behrens, co-funder of the sharing economy app Tradr,
“The collaborative economy is a movement that is changing not only the way we consume and use different things and services, but is also changing our relationship with people around us. Ultimately, it’s also changing the way we see life and ourselves: our mindset changes from a paradigm of scarcity and competition to one of abundance and collaboration”.
The sharing economy is definitely a brand new way of seeing business. When I asked Jessica about how can traditional companies adapt to this new model, she said that in the collaborative economy there are no intermediaries.
“Traditional companies are centralized and this new system is decentralized. People are changing and their behaviors are changing as well. So how traditional companies can survive? There isn’t an easy answer. Everything depends on the kind of business you are in. But definitely they must reinvent themselves, adapting their business to serve communities in a whole different way”, she adds.
In this context of sharing and interacting, many people still get apprehensive with the idea of trusting complete strangers. Talking to my friend Carlos, I asked him about his experience with Airbnb and how was it to go to the house of people who he had never seen.
“They asked a LOT of information about me, including my Facebook profile,” he says. “As I got there, the couple made sure they served me my favorite breakfast everyday and made me feel completely at home. The guy was a state attorney and as I am a law student, we had a lot to talk about”.
Carlos said that if he had stayed at a hotel, he would have spend much more for much less of the comfort he had.
“After this experienced filled with ‘oh Lord, this is not going to work’ fearful thoughts, I highly recommend Airbnb” he completes.
As stated by Botsman, the currency of the new economy is trust. What makes Carlos’s host a promising and potentially a popular host on Airbnb is the review that Carlos can make on the website. By evaluating his stay, Carlos builds a reputation for his host. And if you’re going to choose between staying at a place where no one has before and staying at this house where Carlos said he was so well received, I believe you would choose the place that already has a reputation, right?
Spending much less for much more comfort: that is what inspires so many startups that work with collaborative economy. Based on that idea, you can now find services like:
A Pet Sitter
Pet owners know the struggle of leaving their animals at hotels. They’re expensive and you always feel like your dog/cat/whatever animal is not going to be loved and no one is going to play with it like you do. That’s how the British Dog Buddy was born.
DogBuddy
There are people who love dogs and would love to have yours while you’re away travelling. DogBuddy helps you finding someone on your neighborhood who would enjoy receiving your dog, playing with it and treating it as his or her own. They’ll even send you pictures and news about your pet via Whatsapp.
Skills Trading
We all have those things that we would love to learn and would always postpone it. What if you could learn them without the bureaucracy of a school and without spending any money? Yep, you can do that. 2Tangos connects people who want to learn something to people who can teach something. That is, you find people who can teach you gardening, for example, while you teach them pilates or Spanish.
2Tangos
A Local Unique City Guide
New York’s not all about Time’s Square, Paris’s not only Eiffel Tower and Rio de Janeiro isn’t just Christ The Redeemer. Every time I travel I try to live a local experience but it’s always so hard – since I don’t know the town. And I’m so glad that I’ve found Bubble Globe!
Bubble Globe
The french startup gives you the opportunity to say where you’re going and what types of experience you would like to live. Careful on surfing their website: I want to live all of the experiences already! You can book things like a wine tasting at Paris, a Vespa city tour at Rome or a Sherlock Homes tour at London. The possibilities are infinite. And all of that is guided by a local who you can know everything about before you meet.
A Chores Helper
We all hate moving, we all hate building Ikea furniture, we all hate doing laundry, and we all hate shopping for groceries. But well, it seems like there are people who enjoy doing these chores for you for a living.
TaskRabbit
Task Rabbit allows you to find people around you who you can pay them just to accomplish some of your daily tasks. Time Magazine even wrote once about Task Rabbit and how the ‘rabbits’ are making around $5,000 a month through the website. (http://time.com/money/3714829/working-for-taskrabbit/)
NOTE CREDIT: https://starterpad.com/blog/new-age-economy/