Melih Arat
What’s Mine is Yours / The Rise of Collaborative Consumption is a groundbreaking book by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers. There is an explosion in sharing, bartering, lending, trading, gifting, and swapping.
Probably, one of the first sharing systems is laundries. Instead of owning a washing machine, people use a common washing. Hotels are thousand years old bed sharing systems. But today we have much and more complex sharing systems. People sell stuff on craigslist and eBay, swapping books, DVDs, and games on such Swaptree and Ourswaps, and giving unwanted items away on Freecycle and ReUseIt, On a trip to Paris, Brussels, Vienna people are riding bicycles provided by the local government. People upload content to Slideshare, Flickr, Facebook, and Youtube. They share what they produce or they find important or funny. Subletting (renting your house, when you are out of town) is another sharing system, coach surfing (giving permission of stay to the travelers in your house), limewire (music sharing) are a few examples of collaborative exchange and consumption.
In this book, the authors organized the thousands of examples of collaborative consumption into three systems-product service systems, redistribution markets, and collaborative lifestyles. The new ways of collaborative exchange and consumptions are shaking the outdated modes of business and changing not only what we consume, but how we consume. The traditional business model is based on selling and one time use. However, in collaborative consumption people use any object / any good several times. By swapping a book can be read by unlimited number of people, a car can be used by several people, a music song can be listened by unlimited times.
The most familiar system is the product service systems. The typical example is the laundry or rent a car. Without owning the product, we get the benefit of it. In individual private ownership, we own only one model, but in product service system, we have many options of cars, houses, or washing machines.
The second system is redistribution markets. Social networks enable used or pre-owned goods to be redistributed from where they are not needed to somewhere or someone where they are, fueling
The second type of collaboration consumption, redistribution markets. In some instances, the market place is based on entirely free exchanges (freecycles, kashless, around again).
The Collaborative Lifestyles is the third system. It is not just physical goods such as cars, bikes, and used goods that can be shared, swapped, and bartered. People with similar interests are banding together to share and exchange less tangible assets such as time, skills, and money, what the authors call collaborative life styles. These exchanges are happening on a local level and include shared systems for working spaces(Citizen Space, Hub Culture), goods, (Neighborrow), tasks, time, and errands (DaveZillion, Ithaca HOURs), gardens (Urban Gardenshare, Landshare), skills (Brooklyn Skillshare).
There are four principles of Collaborative Consumption. The first principle, there should be a critical mass. There must be enough choice that the consumer feels satisfied with what is available. For a bike-sharing system, there should be minimum 3000 bikes to make system work. The second principle is social proof. People should see the 3000 bikes and realize that there Is a bike-sharing system. In addition, there should be idling capacity. The third principle is the belief in commons. People should believe that using and protecting the common goods are good. The internet is the most common resource we use. Nobody owns the internet, but everybody shares it. The forth principle is trust between strangers. The collaborative systems are only possible when people trust strangers. In order to sublet your house, you have to trust the people who wants to rent your house. What’s mine is yours is a really interesting books that may help social entrepreneurs, NGOs and local governments.
