Tag: iCollDay

Why is the sharing economy so important?

Posted on by philipdodson

Why is the sharing economy so important? 76% of people in UK have not even heard of it.

Sharing Economy

What exactly is the sharing economy?

Well according to a recent Nesta report in to the collaborative/sharing economy the 5 defining traits are:

1. Enabled by internet technologies.
2. Connecting distributed networks of people and/or assets.
3. Making use of the idling capacity of tangible and intangible assets.
4. Encouraging meaningful interactions and trust.
5. Embracing openness, inclusivity and the commons.

It then goes on to define it further in the report by describing the 4 pillars of activity:

1. Collaborative consumption – gaining access to goods/services through bartering, renting, lending, swapping and so on. Examples of this could be Grub Club.

2. Collaborative production – groups collaborating on design/prodcution. Examples Quirky, Nimber and OpenStreetMap.

3. Collaborative learning – sharing knowledge and resources with learning experiences that are open to anyone. Examples of this are FutureLearn, Skilio and Wikipedia.

4. Collaborative finance – funding, lending and investments outside the traditional financial institutions. Examples Seedrs, Echo, or Zopa.

It’s estimated that within a decade the sharing economy could be worth $335 million globally.

This is not a fad either, this is a complete shift in the way the world is going to operate.

There are three main reasons for me saying that with confidence.

Firstly, the internet/technology is enabling a more efficient way of connecting supply and demand, producers with consumers, which will reap the reward of cutting out a lot of links/middle-men in the chain. Thus making great efficiencies.

Secondly, the dwindling resources coupled with the every increasing demand from the 7 billion and growing people on the planet. This means that sharing and more efficient ways of producing, distributing and consuming goods and services is inevitable and necessary for sustaining the human race.

Lastly, there is a growing generation or community of people who want this and are driving this forward. The connected generation who live in that digital world, who live through their connected online networks. This is growing year on year and these people will be the majority of the working population globally by 2025.

This last reason is the thing that I am most passionate about.

At the age of 47, I have grown up in the 70’s and, most influentially on a whole generation, the 80’s. I grow up through, what will be seen as the worst part of capitalism, where the endless pressure for never ending increases in profit at whatever cost, created a world of selfishness and greed.

We have collectively created that ‘me, me, me’ culture, where we worship at the shrine of possessions, money, profit, bigger, faster and more stuff. The cynical machine has most of us trapped on the hamster wheel of working to maintain that lifestyle.

We live in a world where we are made to feel like a loser if we don’t keep consuming and achieving. Our measure of worthiness is how many friends we have on Facebook.

This is why the sharing economy is so important for the world. It’s not just about efficiencies and technology. What it’s about is people and communities.

The sharing economy is already and will continue to bring people together with a common goal and purpose. That goal is not driven by money and is giving people a chance to belong and become worthy again for being themselves.

The heart has been ripped out of the world and has killed idealism and created cynical greed. What the sharing economy will do is create communities focussed on people.

It is like a beacon of hope on the horizon for all of us, it’s chance to start to unravel the past and a chance to bring equality in to the world. We can start thinking about a human race, which all 7 billion of us belong to. We can start looking at what’s good for all of us, instead of what is good for that top 1%.

So we are at that fork in the road for the human race, one way is clinging on to the old world of ‘ism’ and that broken OS that’s failed or we can be brave and vulnerable and take the other fork.

The other fork allows us to install new software on the world, a new OS that is hard wired to focus on people first and not money.

So if you are not yet involved with the sharing economy, collaboration, then find out about it and get involved for all of our sakes.

What does collaboration really mean for the world?

Posted on by philipdodson

What does collaboration really mean for the world?

I think that we would all agree that with 7 billion of us on the planet and with limited/dwindling resources, something has to change.

The problem at the moment is, we have not yet reached that critical tipping point, where necessity forces change on those who are most resisting it. We need to have shortages of fuel, food, water etc on big scale.

The reason it needs to get to this almost anarchic position is, that the old school system doesn’t want change. It likes the old scarcity, fear based world that it controls. It likes hoarding all the knowledge and it definitely does not like sharing.

The top 1% globally that controls all the wealth and power likes the status quo exactly as it is.

However the collaborative or sharing economy has the potential to give the world a complete ‘software’ upgrade, where we can move from ‘old school bollocks’ 3.8 to a brand new operating system, which is completely focused on sharing. Thus avoid having to wait for a total catastrophe.

The benefits of this for the human race are enormous, it is a chance to start implementing the solutions that can save our world. The world is on ‘fire’ and you’re not going to put it out by pouring the odd bucket or two of water on it, which is the mainly what the governments of the world do. In fact many of them actually help the ‘fire’ to spread by pouring ‘petrol’ on the ‘fire’ not water.

Most of the worlds problems could be solved and be solved by many of the new technologies that are or could be developed if enough resources were allocated to them.

One example could be hydrogen cars or other alternative fuels coupled with driver-less cars that are shared in a community. Why do we all need to own our own car and use up massive amounts of the world’s precious resources. Why because the old school world needs you to buy oil.

We can already share car journeys with platforms such as Bla Bla Car. We can recycle our furniture with Furniture Re-Use Network, we can get people going our way to delivery things via Nimber. However at the moment this sharing economy is in it’s infancy and this what needs to change and fast. The momentum needs to be accelerated.

That’s why collaboration is so important, so time banks like Echo (Economy of Hours) can grow and replace the need for money in the way in which we use it today.

We need that knowledge that the old school system keeps, in order to maintain it’s power and control over us. We need to start sharing ideas and collaborating with others to improve those ideas in order to improve them and unlock that huge latent potential that exists among the 7 billion souls that inhabit this planet.

It’s time to stop all this small minded nations and petty party politics, we need to start thinking about the world as the human race, for many reasons, and we need to get people leading who are not shackled by the dogma of a political agenda that’s based on self-preservation.

Sharing is the only way that we can change the fact, that the 85 most wealthiest people have as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest. I defy anyone to give me a rational argument that’s right and good for the future of the human race.

Sharing and collaborating is the only way to get the message across, that once we reach a level whereby we have food, shelter, and enough ‘creature comforts’ in life that we don’t need to carry on hoarding and accumulating wealth and resources.

I am not suggesting that we all have to live in a shed eating worms, but we all know that we reach a level where adding more material things is an indulgence.

So the time has come to work with each other, help each, give and not do it just get money. Do it to help your community, to help others succeed and to collectively work to replace the old school OS that is now so riddled with bugs and viruses, that it is beyond repair.

I am not suggesting that we have Robin Hood style approach where we take from the rich and give to the poor. It is the responsibility of everyone of us to take ownership of this and do our bit the bring about change. We can bring about that change by collaborating and sharing. This is the way to bypass the old system and create new communities that are not driven by profit and endless accumulation resources for a very, very select few.

Essentially we need to collaborate or die.