The Collaborative Economy

The collaborative economy is defined as initiatives based on horizontal networks and participation of a community. It is built on "distributed power and trust within communities as opposed to centralized institutions" (Rachel Botsman), blurring the lines between producer and consumer.

I was lucky enough to attend Rachel Botsman exclusive event talk in Singapore about the collaborative economy last week. And what a brilliant mindfuck that was. I think everyone in the room was equally impressed by the level of 'out-of-the-box' thinking she promoted.

Here are the areas she identified which were ripe for disruption.

> Complex Experiences

> Waste

> Broken Trust

> Redundant Intermediaries

> Limited Access

People I spoke to felt that her talk revolutionized their way of thinking, inspired them to push boundaries and encouraged more critical thinking towards disruption. The disruption of industry was actually the topic of the day, particularly in the FinTech space.

Several ideas put forward really set up some critical thinking in that room:

- We have always been used to the idea of B2B, and B2C. But C2C? That's what the collaborative economy is about.

- Monetization of space and vacancy. Ideas and companies like Bla Bla Car, TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Uber and Rent-a-pet are the ideas of the future.

- The concept of turning Social Networking into Service Networking and monetizing this.

- Trust is the most valuable commodity of the future. And monetizing trust will be crucial for the collaborative economy to be efficient.

- The new world order demands Access over Ownership. People don't value ownership of any asset as much as access to that asset as and when they feel like it. Hence if you can provide access without the high cost of ownership, then you will unlock the opportunity cost of sinking time, effort and money acquiring ownership of this asset.

- The smartphone is the remote control to the physical world. All businesses have to go into technology to survive.

- The concept of finding the PAIN that people are experiencing and solve it!

- The collaborative economy has created an environment where one of the most valuable hotel chains owns no properties (Airbnb), one of the most valuable transport companies owns no vehicles (Uber), one of the largest online content providers does not produce its own content (Facebook) and so on. That, to me, was mind-blowing.

- Another speaker also covered the underlying power of Alibaba and Tencent.  With a database of about 800 million users. They could easily turn into one of the largest financial powerhouses in the world simply by monetizing this user base.

Otherwise you can easily Google and read more about the collaborative economy.

I even managed to get a picture with Rachel Botsman herself!