Sharing Economy: Leveraging Your Six Degrees Of Separation
The Airbnb(s) and Uber(s) of today allow users to monetize their assets by leasing them out to other users. These assets range from real-estate, to ride shares, to toys, and the list goes on. There has been an explosion of businesses developed in the “sharing economy” space, some of which have become multi-billion-dollar entities. Is this really shared economy, or, as Giana M. Eckardt and Fleura Bardhi opined in their Harvard Business Review article, an access economy? At the heart of access economy services like Airbnb or Uber, monetary transactions take place that instantly reward the owner of the asset. There is no goodwill, and the level of trust is mostly driven by an open-ended ranking/rating system.
Do we always need to have a monetary transaction, or, can we actually create a trusted community where sharing is based on goodwill? Such a community might be thought of as being formed by trusted links between its members, mobilizing utility through network ties. This arrangement has the following effects:
- It acts like a barter system, where the exchange of services is free and based on goodwill and trust.
- There is no monetary transaction, it is an exchange of similar goods.
- It allows expansion of an individual’s social fabric, allowing them to meet new people from within their six degrees of separation.
Access economy services like Airbnb do have their relevance. If there is a ROI expected on an investment, like real-estate, car, or other asset, then leasing makes more sense. If there are assets sitting idle, like an extra room or empty venues that can host events, these need to be exchanged for a normalized denomination of wealth (monies) that can be used for more general-purpose spending. The difference is that these transactions boil down to a monetary benefit, and cannot extract value from human connections.
A pure sharing economy, however, rewards individuals with a similar asset for use when needed in the future. As discussed above, this avenue also opens up the channel for expanding social fabric and strengthening network connections in line with an individual’s identity. This is truly powerful.
The one caveat — the success of a pure sharing eco-system relies heavily on goodwill and trust, which means that such an ecosystem needs to grow organically, leveraging the power of your six degrees of separation.
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Shout out to my friend paco rivilla for reviewing and providing suggestions for this article!
