I just returned yesterday from my brief trip to Austin for this year’s SXSW. Not only do I want to go back next year, but I would gladly skip CES in favor of SXSW. The reason being CES, although very techy, feels too corporate and doesn’t truly represent the consumers that would actually use products introduced there. For me, SXSW really thrives on community and face to face interaction. Don’t get me wrong, technology is still very prevalent, but in this case, technology is brought to Austin in order to gauge how the typical user would interact with it. It brings a more real world feel to things.
There is one thing in particular that resonated with me in my brief trip to Austin. On Saturday, I attended a panel on The New Sharing Economy. Below is a description:
Not too long ago, we got Zipcar, eBay, and Netflix. We got Prosper and Kiva and Kickstarter. What do they have in common? They ask people to share in one way or another. These days, sharing is an industry thanks largely to new technology. And it’s critical to the environment, the economy, and the way we live together as a society. It’s also an industry that we don’t know much about yet. In 2010, Latitude Research and Shareable Magazine conducted the first-ever comprehensive sharing industry to establish benchmarks for awareness and adoption of existing sharing services, as well as sharing attitudes and behaviors relating to everything from information to food to transportation to workspace to travel accommodations. The study also sought to understand the new “psychology of sharing”. What are the perceived benefits of sharing? What motivates someone to try sharing initially? What are the barriers to sharing, and how do we overcome them? Looking to the future, the study was able to answer what user demands exist, but aren’t yet being met, in this new economy of sharing.
The panel got my mind thinking on how this “new economy” should make automakers rethink their industry. Sharing is a growing commerce and more and more people are trying to leverage it. Think about a car. On average, it is used for 1-2 hours per day. What happens with the remaining 22-23 hours? It likely just sits in your driveway or a parking lot. Also consider the amount of money owners spend on maintenance, insurance, gas and the very loans used to purchase them. Not a great ROI if you ask me.
The other aspect of sharing that really intrigued me was the idea of the community involved in sharing. There is an assumed trust if a consumer is willing to give usually private information to a company in order to borrow a product. Additionally, if the experience is good, that consumer might share that experience about that particular brand throughout their social network. This idea isn’t entirely new to those of us that have a passion for the social web, however, the context of the idea is new.
The idea of sharing shouldn’t scare GM, Ford, Chrysler and the like. What it should do is make those companies think about sharing in a way that represents change in a business model that for a while now has been passed up by consumer trends and technology. Rethink how cars are manufactured to fit this new economy of collaborative consumption and you might just discover a new way to do business.
The final thing I’ll leave you with is this talk from Rachel Botsman at a TED talk last year. She introduces the idea of collaborative consumption. It’s a well spent 16 minutes. After watching, I’m interested in your thoughts on how this new economy can redefine an old one. Let me know in the comments below.
