People Are Sharing in the Collaborative Economy for Convenience and Price. The sharing economy grows up. The sharing economy continues to attract attention as it grows into an ever more significant economic force.
Estimates of its scale vary and are, because of the very nature of the sector, difficult to achieve. One estimate put the value of the sector at $110 billion; another puts peer to peer rental at $26 billion. Airbnb, the room share service, is valued at $2.5 billion and has estimated revenues of $623 million in New York alone. Big numbers in anyone’s book. Several things are driving the growth. The scale, potential for disruption and opportunity in almost equal measure and increasing professionalism of the sharing economy – it has just formed its first industry body PEERS - are focusing minds and attention on the wider impacts; not all of it complimentary. Cities are beginning to respond and develop clear policies and strategies to encourage the benefits and minimise problems. And we probably ‘ain’t seen nothing yet’. And the sharing economy will also benefit public services. Why every leader should care about digitization and disruptive innovation.
The disruptive impact of technology is the topic of a McKinsey-hosted discussion among business leaders, policy makers, and researchers at this year’s meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland.
In this video, two session participants preview the critical issues that will be discussed, including the impact of digitization and automation on labor markets and how companies can adapt in a world of rapid technological change. What follows is an edited transcript of their remarks. Interview transcript Disruption everywhere James Manyika: The reason disruptive technologies are very important to all leaders—whether they’re CEOs or policy makers—is because, for the first time, we now have technology affecting every single sector of the economy. Andrew McAfee: By now we’re all familiar with digitized text, digitized audio, and digital video.
Free exchange: Net benefits. How Freelancers Are Redefining Success To Be About Value, Not Wealth. In an iconic scene in The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort--the “wolf” played by Leonardo DiCaprio--launches his $40,000 Rolex into a sea of outstretched hands, as eager young stockbrokers lunge for it, nearly clobbering one another in the process.
The scene perfectly captures the infamous excesses of Wall Street in the ‘80s. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how it contrasts with the dramatic shift underway in the American economy. The nation’s 42 million freelancers are rewriting the definition of success--and it has nothing to do with gold watches, but everything to do with time. Independent workers are establishing a new way to work--and in the process, they’re cultivating a new way of life. Success in 2014 is less about wealth than it is about value--the value of time, community, and well-being.
As the availability of the traditional 40-hour-a-week job wanes, so does its appeal. Many freelancers rightly see the standard workweek as a prison of the past. Free exchange: Net benefits. Peers - Welcome to the Sharing Economy. The Sharing Economy by Professor Arun Sundararajan. Peer-to-peer rental: The rise of the sharing economy. LAST night 40,000 people rented accommodation from a service that offers 250,000 rooms in 30,000 cities in 192 countries.
They chose their rooms and paid for everything online. But their beds were provided by private individuals, rather than a hotel chain. Hosts and guests were matched up by Airbnb, a firm based in San Francisco. Since its launch in 2008 more than 4m people have used it—2.5m of them in 2012 alone. It is the most prominent example of a huge new “sharing economy”, in which people rent beds, cars, boats and other assets directly from each other, co-ordinated via the internet.
You might think this is no different from running a bed-and-breakfast, owning a timeshare or participating in a car pool. What’s mine is yours, for a fee Just as peer-to-peer businesses like eBay allow anyone to become a retailer, sharing sites let individuals act as an ad hoc taxi service, car-hire firm or boutique hotel as and when it suits them.