Introductory lectureon the Sharing/Collaborative Economy

& attempt to embed it into a wider context

Thomas DönnebrinkOuiShare Connector Germany Freelancer Collaborative Economy@TDoennebrink thomas@ouishare.netIllustrations by Thuy Chinh Duong

The visitor programme of the Goethe-Institute organises on behalf of the German Foreign Office & other organisations information travels to Germany – for multiplicators, experts and journalists.

Thank you very much for the invitation and for entrusting me with the delivery of the introductory lecture on the Sharing and Collaborative Economy as the kick-off of the Goethe Institute‘s visitors programme on behalf of the German Federal Foreign Office and your information tour in Germany about the Sharing Economy

My name is Thomas Dönnebrink. I am based in Berlin My background is in education and teaching and having been the co-initiator, founding CEO and first headmaster of the German Embassy School in Izmir, Turkey was one of my roles in this field.But for several years now I am working as a Freelancer on the Collaborative Economy/Society in particular and on Transformation and Paradigm shift in particular.

I am one of the connectors of OuiShare, a global network of people interested in promoting a collaborative & sharing society.

1. Understanding Share- & Collaborative Economy 2. Contextualisation: Old vs. New Economy/Society3. Status Quo Share- & Collaborative Economy

-----------------------------------------------------------------4. Feedback Council5. Q & A / discussion / debate

Here is what you can expect in the following 90 min.

I would like to use LESS than half of the time to deliver an introductory lecturewhich will consist of the following three parts

In the first part, I will give you an overview of the Collaborative Economy my home turf and the angle from which I will look at the attempt to embed it into a wider context in the second part.

The contextualisation in the second part I will do by comparing two economies: One that I want to call old, as it starts showing symptoms of age. And one that I want to call new – for now – as it is about to be born. – Or more precisly – is already alive and kicking. Of course this juxtaposition will be schematic, at times provocative and therefore simplistic. Nevertheless I hope this approach will contribute some food for thoughts and trigger a debate about the bigger pictures as well as a lively discussion later.

In the third part I want to step down again from the metalevel and share my assessment of where the collaborative and sharing economy is staying right now and where it is – or should be – heading.

Concerning the SECOND half of our session – more later.

Let‘s start with regarding the collaborative economy.We distinguish four different fields, which of course overlap & reinforce each other.

Best known and most widely spread is the field of collaborative consumption.

Less known, but likely even more disruptive to the status quo in the future are the fields of collaborative production and collaborative finance.

In a fourth field called openness or collaborative learning, concepts like open software, open hardward, open knowledge, open government and governance are summarized. Aspects of this field of openness play an important role in all three fields mentioned before.

I will add a few words to each of the four fields later.

Talking about the collaborative economy we like to start with a quote of Chris Anderson, the former chief editor of the Wired magazines, who summarizes well the first 20 years of this millenium in two sentences.

He says: The past decade was about finding new collaboration and innovation models on the web. The next decade will be about applying them to the real world.

Let me elaborate on his statement for a minute.Looking at the first decade we see platforms like Wikipedia, Linux, Wordpress, flickr, Facebook, Youtube &Twitter popping up and growing strong and influencial.

They allow extending communities to share music, knowledge, code, picture, videos, news with the entire world.

A whole generation, the DIGITAL NATIVES, have grown up in this online world of collaboration & sharing. It is part of their natural DNA and behaviour.

What‘s next is that this behaviour and attitude of collaboration & sharing gets applied to the real world. Thousands of platforms - like blabla car, airbnb or food sharing - examples used in the illustration - are emerging everywhere, enabling people to access and share not just digital goods online but real world assets.

What we are seeing is a merging of the online & offline world.

To summarize this development, we can distinguish four phases:

Phase 1 We connect to share information Phase 2 We connect to each other to form social networksPhase 3 We connect to share bitsPhase 4 We connect to access and share atoms

In a nutshell: sharing & communal use reaches new dimensions through new technology and new experiences.

What is driving this collaborative economy? We see four main drivers at work.

No.1. Rapid expansion of technological innovation and digitalisation through Internet & mobileNo. 2 A longing for community & participation after decades of autistic materialism.No. 3 An increasing environmental consiousness &awareness of the planet‘s limitsNo. 4 Economic constraints. Necessity as the mother of innovation

Driver 2 &3 are actually to a large extent a renaissance of traditional behaviours and modes of connectedness, Nevertheless in their drive to alter the status quo we can consider them to be expressions of social innovation.

These drivers of social innovation are joining force with the drivers of technological innovation and are therefore creating a new disruptive quality which I suggest to call COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION

I consider this collaborative innovation - an important origin as well as engine - for the value shift I see unfoalding.

There are certain pre-conditions to the collaborative economy.

1. Trust: Digital Technology, GPS, Social Netzwerks are enabling collaborative technologies like e.g reputation systemes to create Trust. Mistrusted strangers become trusted frangers or friends.2. Belief in the commons is created by: a value shift concerning importance of property, life styles & aims in life.3. Idle capacity is increasingly realized and considered inefficent and wasteful (classical example: the car 23/24)4. Value of growing networks allow for better and better matching and transaction costs are developping towards 0.

The more the pre-conditions are improving - and all four do - the faster and wider the collaborative economy will extend and with it the desruption of the status quo.

Now let‘s have a closer look at the four areas of the collaborative economy. First: collaborative consumption.

WHAT do we share?(Almost) Everything can and will be shared as long or as soon as necessary pre-condition - mentioned in the last slide - are met. HOW do we share?We actually are observing a renaissance of traditional marketplace behaviour like reselling, bartering, renting, lending, etc. We do share without or with money and with or without using technology

WHY do we share?Even though economic considerations of saving or earning money often comes first. Environmental and social reasons of achieving more recource efficiency and connectivness with other people gains increasing importance.

So what are the resulting effect? 1. Access beats ownership2. Raise of new business modells3. Raise of new Collaborative Lifestyles/Opportunities

In a nutshell: Not just what we consume, but how we consume changes

Second: Collaborative Production

Coworking spaces are doubling every 12 months for five years in the row now.

More and more people are coming together in an increasing number of fabrication labs and hackerspaces to develope, create and produce collaboratively.

In the past preaggregated capital & infrastructure was usually the precondition to start production.

Now increasingly easier and cheaper access to means of production give more and more people the opportunity to become producers.

This can be considered a democratization of production.

Open Hardware provides one with licence free tools and components. FabLabs & Hackerspaces gives one access to spaces and machinery.Open Communities enables one to hook up with the right people and get free access to valuable knowlegeMarketplaces like Kickstarter or Etsy gives everybody the opportunity to raise funds or sell their produce

This democratization of production will also foster its (Re)localisation.Michael Bauwens encapsulated it well in his speech at the recent Degrowth confrence in Leipzig:

If it‘s light it should be global. If it‘s heavy it should be local.

Just to give an example how far collaborative production can challenge established structures, I want to present Wikispeed. An open source car project.

The achieves 100 MPG, runs on less than 3 liters. The first prototype was built in 3 months by 40 volunteers with almost no budget. The car consists of modular components bringing product cycles down to just days allowing rapid experimentation & application of new innovations. In contrast the traditional automotive industry has product cycles of seven years, involving big fix costs, both making change & innovation costs huge. How disruptive these differences will play out in the years to come has to be seen.

The collaborative Finance seems to develop into another game changer.

We distinguish between crowdfunding, crowdinvesting & crowd lending.All variants provides everybody with new opportunity to raise money & bypass banks.

The 5,1 Billion $ of wordwide collaborative finance raised in 2013 were still neglectable peanuts for the banking industry. The 1000 Billion $ the Forbes Magazine predicts for 2020 however will not feel like peanuts anymore.

A look at the Top 11 crowdfunding campaigns to date shows that each of the hardware, video game, or real estate projects has raised multiple millions.Even a funny campagne to make a potato salad managed to raise 55.000 $

Due to time constraints I can‘t dig into the potential of the vast disruptive force of this fourth field of the collaborative economy. For the sake of completeness I just want to emphasize the fact that the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia managed to make proprietary versions - like the 200-year-old Britannica or the highly funded Microsoft Encarta obsolete within a few years.

The collaborative economy is on the rise and increasingly sinks into the public awareness as these front page covers of widespread magazine Illustrates. As the Economist puts it:“It’s time to start caring about sharing”.

To sum up the first part - The Collaborative Economy is changing

NOT ONLY how we ...... live, travel & move around... learn, work, produce & finance

BUT ALSO HOW we ... experience our environment & communal life... And how we think & act As Charles Eisenstein, the US social philosopher says: Every system is build upon values and a story. If you want to change the system you have change the underlying values and the story that upholds it. The best leverage to system change.

This leads us to take a look at the systems: old economy vs. new economy. As mentioned at the beginning the assessments will be schematic, at times provocative.

To give a first overview of the old economy and society.

It is characterized by the two main players: the state and private enterprises looking for power and for profits. Both are organized in hierarchical pyramids and function in a top-down manner. Dominant features are competition, order & control achieved by means of extrinsic motivation via rules, punishment or incentives. The state and corporations function as intermediaries, which try to insure, control & secure scarcity via access barriers, access control and monopolies in order to guarantee (high) profit and (unchallenged) power. Accompanying inefficiencies and intransparencies are accepted or even desired. Personal property is of highest value allowing exclusivity & status, also echoing the underlying worldview of the homo oeconomicus trying to maximise personal benefit

A first overview of the new economy and society draws a different picture People have become players themself. Peers organize the satisfaction of their needs among each other - beyond market & state They are organized in peer networks that show horizontal structures like a pancake. Dominant features are collaboration, trust, self-organisation and intrinsic motivation. Old division between producer vs. Consumer or employer vs. Employee are blurring or merging into one. - People become prosumers & microentrepreneurs. Peers interact directly with each other - bypassing intermediaries and thus creating more transparency and efficiency. Personal property is valued less as access to property and participation in the commons allows for inclusion & belonging also echoing the underlying worldview of the homo collaborans wanting to do what benefits his/her surrounding.

Let me elaborate on this first overflight for a few minutes. I will continue the juxtaposition of the old and new economy under six headings. Starting with the general circumscription. The old economy is a market or trade economy, but how to call the new one: Collaborative? P2P? Care? Solidarity? Or Civic Economy. Open to debate. The focus of the old economy is on the material world, on objects and products that have to be pushed into the market. Success is expressed and measured in GDP performances. As a greed economy people try to take as much as they can and give as little as possible. Internalising profits and externalising costs, It is Ego-centric and extractive as well as exploitive in nature. The focus of the new economy is people and the immaterial world. Success is expressed in Gross National Happiness Index or other forms of measurements.As a need economy people give as much as they can and take what they need (like in families and circle of friends). It is Eco-centric and additive as well as contributive in nature. The old economy shows a tendency to create inequality, the new economy more equality.

Concerning the conception of the world of both systems We already mentioned the homo economicus, the lonely fighter separated from nature which he treats and exploits as commodity and separated from other human beings with who he competes for resources in a world perceived as full of scarcity. Focus is on quantity, transactions, products and objects. Success is measured in absolute and relative aggregation of private ownership. The homo collaborans, considers himself as part of nature which he tries to sustain- and he feels connected with his fellow humans with who he collaborates and shares goods and experiences in a world perceived as full of abundance. Focus in on quality, connectedness, people & relationships. Success is measured in felicity, usefulness and meaning. The old economy shows a tendency to exclusion & enclosure, the new economy is more inclusive, open & transparent.

Speaking of planet & environment. The old economy regards & treats nature & natural resources as commodities, fit for exploitation. It‘s sales oriented economy is based on accelerating product-in trash-out cycles increasingly accumulating waste and toxic residues. Depletion of the resources finally create scarcity & conflict. The new economy considers itself an inseparable, interdependent & symbiotic part of nature. The decelerated need oriented economy is organized in closed cycles, avoiding disposal or use of toxic components. Circular arrangements and fair distributions avoid scarcity & conflict. The old economy creates monocultures and degenerates the natural basis of existence. The new economy has a stronger inclination to (bio)diversity & sustaining the natural livelihood.

Contemplating people in both systems People in the old economy tend to have a more static position, usually fulfilling one role (like one profession, one job, or a certain task) Often this role is defined and directed by others and express a dependency relationship. Regulations, control, punishment and incentives become means for extrinsic motivation. People in the new economy find themselves in more dynamic settings. They tend to have multiple roles and thus increasing options and chances for more autonomous and active lifestyles. Which not necessary will make life easier or more enjoyable as we have to relearn to deal with regained freedom and self-determination.

Concerning interaction in both systems The old economy is dealing with independent, isolated entities. Independence and dependence are the prevailing relationships. Competition is the dominant pattern causing entities to work against each other creating a dog-eats-dog-society where exploitation, exclusion and monopolization is rewarded with a competitive advantage. Regulations, laws and control have to keep mutual mistrust in check & balance. The new economy consists of networks of connected entities. Interdependence is the prevailing relationship. Collaboration is the default fostering a trust-enhancing society where sharing, exchange, network effects &the activation of the full potential of the people achieves better results.

And finally looking at the comparision of organizations. In the old economy organisations are fairly static units with rigid borders & hierarchical top-down rule. Goals & processes as well as responsibilities and liabilities are often well defined. Tasks & responsibilities clearly separated. Both tend to specialization and entrenched habits. Established structures often involve a great deal of fix costs - causing inflexibility & immobility.

Typical activities of the old economy are: control, direct, manage, plan ahead, aggregate, budget, execute

In the new economy units tend to me more dynamic, flexible and created ad-hoc with crossing borders and P2P self-organization. Goals and processes are formulated ad-hoc or as needed. Tasks & responsibilities are less separated leaving more space for serendipity & innovation. The units are often lean and can therefore be very flexible and mobil.

Typical activities of the new economy are: coordinate, ad-hoc building & evaluation, enable, improvise, experiment. The old economy tends to centralization & bureaucratization. The new economy inclines more to decentralization.

The awareness is rising that our current economical system, the old economy, and the direction it is heading is neither sustainable nor desirable. A questionnaire of the conservative German media foundation Bertelsmann revealed that 88% & 90% of the Germans and Austrians desire a new economic orderOne that bears in mind the environment, sustainable resource usage & social balance in society. A staggering result! Now is the question, how to get to the other side?And what will happen next?

Jeremy Rifkin, Economist, Head of Foundation on Economic Trends:

Predicts hybrid economy & eclips of capitalism till 2060Leading to 3. industrial revolution & collaborative commons

Charles EisensteinVisonary, Culture philosopher

Expects collapse of old systemdue to a future crisis.

Prediction when & where difficult - like snapping of tight rope.

Here two voices

1. Jeremy Rifkin, Economist & head of the Foundation on Economic Trends, makes a quite precise prediction He sees currently a parallel flourishing of both systems partially cooperating, partially competing.Nevertheless he dates the eclipse of capitalism around the year 2060 and predicts that the old model will cease to unilateral determine the economy. Reasons for this development are on the one hand the increasing substitution of the old system through barter, DIY & cooperative structure. People will have own solar panels instead of buying electricity, will share cars instead buying an own ones and will exchange spaces among each other instead of renting hotel rooms Another reason for the decline he sees in a paradox deeply embedded in the capitalist theory and practice, the margin costs which turns problematic if they reach zero. Charles Eisensteins, visionary and social philosopher, also expects a collapse of the old system, but he says that it will be difficult to say when and where this will happen – most likely triggered through some sort of crisis or disaster. He compares the old system to a big rope, difficult to cut if it’s loose, but as it tightens a small cut can be enough to snatch it. When and where this will happen he considers unpredictable.

3) Status Quo & Quo vadisShare & Collaborative

Economy?

A little interactive element

After this excursion on the metalevel let‘s take a look again at the sharing and collaborative economy and let‘s ask the following questions:

What is the status quo right now? What is the secret of the “success” of these platforms? A success for whom? Who is benefitting from the current developpments? Who is not?Are there different developpments or stages?Where is it going? Where should it go?

Let’s approach the question in form of a quiz.

a) Founded after 2000b) US Enterprisec) Zerod) 42

Question: What do the following brands have in

common ?

Question: What do the following brands have in

common ?

a) Founded after 2000 (Not Alibaba)

b) US enterprise (Not Alibaba)

c) Zerod) 42 (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

And the winner is ... ZERO

Since a) Alibaba was founded 1999 b) Alibaba is a Chinese company and d) the number 42 is quite important in the context of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but is irrelevant here.

after 7 year the world’s biggest taxi company owns ZERO cars> 1 Mio rides/day in 2015

after 12 years the most popular media platform produces ZERO content

after 17 years the most valuable retailer in the world has ZERO inventory

after 8 years the largest global provider of accommodation owns ZERO of its own real estate80 Mio accomodations in 2015

The Power of ZERO

41 Bil. $62+ Bil. $

184 Bil. $ 210 Bil. $ 20 Bil. $25+ Bil. $

UBER: after 7 year the world’s biggest taxi company owns ZERO cars. FACEBOOK: after 12 years the most popular media platform produces ZERO content.ALIBABA: after 17 years the most valuable retailer in the world has ZERO inventory.AIRBNB: after 8 years the largest global provider of accommodation owns ZERO of its own real estate.

These platforms are operating with external assets and collaboration forms which made them rapidly big, rich and influential. Here we see some figures from 2014 (in grey partially updated).

in: 449 cities in 66 countries (Wikipedia)VC: 12.5 Billion$ in 15 rounds by 56 investors (Crunchbase)

But let‘s have a closer look at two of them.

You know UBER? The online transportation network from Silicon Valley - or more simply and precisely a mobile App which connects passengers with private freelancer drivers.

Today UBER is operating in about 450 cities in 66 country (continuously there are more added or dropped at times as they occasionally get prohibited to operate in certain cities).

A quick check at Crunchbase tells us that Uber has collected until now more than 12,5 billion $ in 15 founding rounds by 56 investors.

So the war chest is well stuffed. Nevertheless money gets also quickly burned above all for marketing, lobbying, lawyers and lawsuits.

According to a study by the labour economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger the close to 400.000 UBER driver in the USA could constitute around 2/3 of all gig economy work. In addition to the enormous evaluation of currently more than 62 billion $ this circumstance also contributes to the high visibility of UBER.

So no wonder UBER finds often immitators or wanna-bes. „We will be the UBER of X“Have you heard that before?

>1,5 Mio. Listings in: 34.000 cities in 191 countries (Wikipedia)VC: 2.39 Billion. $ in 8 rounds by 32 investors – 10 acquisitions (Crunchbase)

As often one can also hear: “We are the Airbnb for X” Hereby the second flagship of this category gets named

Most of you will know airbnb: It is an online marketplace where people can - via Internet or mobile phones - list, discover or book private spaces. Two of the three founders began in October 2007 during a designer fair to rent out an airbed in their living room. This turned into a business model and in August 2008 into the foundation of a company.

Today there are more than 1,500,000 listings in 34,000 cities in 191 countries. Airbnb managed in a fraction of time to offer more beds than the biggest hotel chains and they achieve this with a fraction of employees and an even higher valuation. Factor 10 could be a good approach for a rule of thumb.

A fresh look into Crunchbasereveals that airbnb has collected almost 2,4 billion $ in 8 funding rounds from 32 investors from which also financed ten acquisitions.

Of course airbnb or UBER are mentioned here just as pars pro toto for a certain generic term. Often pitches of startup of this category start with: "We are the airbnb or uber for X". Where X can then represent a arbitrary industry, area of life or need.

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Alongside house and car there are still many realms in which thousand of platforms – partly with exponential growth rates – increasingly and rapidly change and transform our economy and society and how we travel, live, work, think and act.

There are different attempts to comprehensive overviews. One of the most known is the Honeycomb of Jeremiah Owyang of Crowd Companies.

Here the latest edition 3.0 released March 2016 in which 280 startups were picked out of 460 investigated.

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The realms, industries and startups might have been multifaceted and the ideas and their implementation creative.

Nevertheless when it came to governance and ownership models creativity and multiplicity quickly died out.

The term Uberisation does not only translates into a description of the technical aspect of a platform, a mobile app, to enable the Peer-to-Peer transactions between customers and providers, but also into a narrowing of pathways of design and action to those of the neoliberal, libertarian Silicon Valley.

They predominantly look like this: - Search and implementation of a marketable idea- Attraction of plenty of VC capital - Scaling and striving for monopoly positions in order to - Achieve rapid and lucrative IPOs to rake in high ROIs –> everything else is – at the most – just subordinated to this logic – at the latest when the VC capital and with it the inherent constraints have taken over the helm.

Enormous is the presence and the impression of success names like UBER and Airbnb – as well as the company, models and philosophies they represent – have left in the media, in the heads of young entrepreneurs and profit oriented investors.

It would seem that Margret Thatchers TINA: “There is no alternative” still reverberates strongly.

PlatformCapitalism, capitalism on steroids & 1%

Is it surprising that in the end what goes into the process is what comes out?

Sascha Lobo coined the term “Platform Capitalism” in one of his Spiegel Online articles in September 2014 and Jeremiah Owyang emphasized in one of his keynotes on the OuiShare Fest 2015 in May, that the VCs have invested – in a short space of time – almost 12 billion $ in the collaborative economy. This means: most startups belong the VCs, the Venture Capitalists. In a nutshell: the sharing economy is owned and steered by the 1%.

And Douglas Rushkoff, author of the best-seller: „Throwing rocks at the Google Bus“ sums up on the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference that “digital tech was supposed to usher in an age of prosperity, but so far it has put industrial capitalism on steroids. Social networks surrender their missions to data mining, and banks abandon investing for algorithms- all to stoke growth. Startups sell for billions but destroy more jobs and markets than they create.“ Rushkoff therefore calls for a new operating system for the digital economy.

Stages of theSharing & Collaborative

Economy

For me Collaborative Economy 1.0 the following characteristics: - Peers come together on platforms – be it online or offline – and - Peers form self-organized, self-governed communities which can count into the thousands or even millions and - Peers collaboratively create, share and distribute value and – as Yochai Benkler said at the Culture Symposium organized by the Goethe Institute and others in Weimar beginning of June 2016 –“the critical point was effective production without price signals and managerial commands” Collaborative Economy 1.0 Peer’s predominant motivation is social interaction and one, more or all of the following: having fun, doing good, helping others, creating commons, making better use of recourses or leaving a smaller ecological foot print.Examples are ranging from retirees in repair cafés, girls exchanging cloths, citizens saving food from waste or growing it in urban gardening projects. Famous platform are foodsharing or the early Couchsurfing. Others, like certain open source software or entities like Wikipedia even moved from the periphery of the economy to the center.

Current Designof Collaborative Economy 2.0

With Collaborative Economy 2.0 I refer to traditional companies, start-ups and other players, moving into this space after seeing the success of collaborative peer production and peer platforms but whose main motivation is profit maximization and monopolization.

Or as Benkler puts it: “What we have seen in the last few years is market mechanisms using the same exact transaction cost structure but layering over them price driven clearance and using some of the ideological framing of sharing and cooperation as a feel good overlay on top of it. So as to use the same emotional, psychological, social dynamics that drives social sharing to simplify the problem of harnessing resources into an extractive model.” end of quote.

So it get’s us to the before mention “Platform Capitalism” coined by Sascha Lobo, own by the 1% as expressed by Jeremiah Owyang leading to Douglas Rushkoff and others call for a new operating system.

So the question is how to keep and support the good stuff and get rid and block the bad stuffOr differently put the search has started to look for a better, more complementary back end.

Here front end and back end is not used in the technical sense.

New “back end” developments

New „back end“ developments: On Nov. 13.-14. 2015 the first Platform Cooperativism Conference took place in New York City. Organised by Trebor Scholz, professor for culture and media at the New School in NYC and Nathan Schneider, journalist and assistant professor for media at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Both released an article in Dezember 2014 which coined important terms. Nathan Schneider wrote the Shareable article: "Owning is the new Sharing“ and Trebor Scholz published in Medium the article: “Platform Cooperativism vs. The Sharing Economy.“ I recommend to read both.

According to Trebor Scholz platform cooperativism is „about cloning the technological heart of online platforms and puts it to work with a cooperative model, one that puts workers, owners, communities, and cities in a kind of solidarity that leads to political power” (Quelle)

The event brought together 100+ contributors and each day a 1000+ Coders, designers, scientists, researchers, cooperativists, platform entrepreneurs et al. 1.800 people followed the twitter account @platformcoop and the hashtag #platformcoop were leading on 13. of November the national chart for 5 hours.

As intended the conference turned into a „coming-out party“ for the cooperative Internet. Participation, feedback and enthusiasm even surpassed all expectations and thus not only contributed to a decent dissemination of the concept of platform cooperativism, but set in motion a new and important political debate about the economy and society in general. For more information, videos etc. see www.platformcoop.net

Welcome to the Next Stageof the Collaborative Economy

With the following quote of Neal Gorenflo, editor of the Shareable Magazine, I want to finish my input and start the second round where I am very eager to receive your feedback and learn your take on the topic:

Neal says: “The future belongs to enterprises that distribute control and wealth rather than concentrating it, and that's not a utopian dream, it's an increasingly practical necessity in order to attract and keep customers in a zero marginal cost world.“

Thank you !

Thomas DönnebrinkOuiShare Connector GermanyFreelancer Collaborative Economy

www.about.me/thomasdoennebrinkthomas@ouishare.net @tdoennebrink +49 176 32335744

Illustrations by Thuy Chinh Duong chinh@harry.do @chinhzilla

OuiShare1 Magazine ouishare.net4 Global Conferences2 Tours (LATAM/Europa8 International Summits100+ Facebook Groups200+ OuiShare Events2000+ Members35000+ Facebook Fans> 30 cities in Europa, Lateinamerica & Near Osten

4. Internationale Konferenz. 18.-21.Mai 2016 “After the Gold Rush”

About OuiShare

OuiShare originated four years ago in Paris out of a blog around the topic of collaborative consumption. In the meantime it has developed into an international peer-network with several thousand members and the object of study increasingly broadens becoming more holistic.

As a movement, think and do-tank OuiShare has organized by now several hundred events in a few dozens cities in Europe, the Americas and the Near East.

Since 2013 the three-day OuiShareFest takes place in Paris in May. As biggest event around the collaborative economy and society it attracts each year more than 1000+ participants and experts from around the world.

ValuesOpenness – Transparency – Independence – Impact – Feedback – Action – MPRL (Meet People in Real Life) – PermanentBeta – Inclusion - Play

PlatformCoopsStill in its infancy

Despite of all atmosphere of departure and first established foundation and initiated momentum it has to be emphasized: platform cooperativism is still in its infancy.

There are not many pure platformcoops – yet. Just a few can already look back on longer experience and none is as known, talked about or successful in financial terms as UBER, airbnb & co. – yet again.

Nevertheless for more and more entrepreneurs about to launch a platform-based start-up are taking the cooperative model as an option into consideration.

Or already incorporated entities are considering to transform into cooperatives – or have done so already.

The founding of platformcoops is on the rise, the experience and exchange increases. I call it the beginning of the Collaborative Economy 3.0.

In the directory of internetofownership.net or among the contributions of platformcoop.net examples can be found. In an article on May 18th 2016 Shareable presents the following:

1.Fairmondo a platform cooperative from Berlin consisting of 2000+ cooperativists that have collected more than 600.000€ in several funding rounds so far to work on a platform that wants to challenge ebay and Amazon. An offshoot in the UK has evolved, another in the US is in the making.

2. Stocksy is a Canadian based platformcoop for stock photography in which the featured photographer also become the proprietor of the platform. Stocksy is already profitable and growing rapidly.

3. Backfeed is a platform from Israel creating platform coops by means of blockchain technology.

4. Juno is one of the growing examples of UBER challengers. Ist is not a cooperative, but the factor that 50% of shares a set aside for driver and that it is aimed at just taking 10% of commission instead of the current bite of 20-25% UBER takes out, makes this NYC based approach also an interesting case. Especially given that it is initiated by the Viber Founder who has sold his company for 900 million $ showing that he possesses the funds, connections and talent to pull this off.

5. Union Taxi is another UBER challenger from Denver. This one 100% driver-owned.

6. VTC Cab is a platform cooperative from Paris calling UBER out in Paris.

7. Modo is a car-sharing platform cooperative from Vancouver with 16.000 cooperativists and a fleet of 500 vehicles, which each member can easily rent out for 4$/h via the App.

8. Timefounder via this platform from Barcelona the contributions of project collaborators are tracked and turned into fair equity shares.

9. Enspiral is a fast growing and turning famous collective of social entrepreneurs and freelancers from New Zealand. With loomio and cobudget they have developed two open source programs which successfully address pressing questions of efficient as well as transparent and participatory decision making processes and fair value distribution and have made it available as open source.

10. Tapazz is a P2P carsharing cooperative from Belgium.

11. Peerby is not a cooperative, but a B-Corp from the Netherlands. Since they have recently raised – in what turned out to be one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns – more than 2 million € from their users and promoters they are now predominantly owned by them. The conscious embedding and anchoring of certain cooperative principles in other form of organizations – like B-Corps in this case – is another interesting development and possible leverage.

In my contribution to the conference in NYC I had presented some more actors. If interested the presentation can be found on slideshare in English and Spanish, therefore I want to exemplify here only three:

Goteo from Spain is the cooperative approach to crowdfunding platforms.The platform is open source and successful both for the provider as well as for the users of which more than 70% achieve their funding goal. Only open source and commons based projects are permitted.

Good Data from London, is the worldwide first data cooperative, which allows their users to control their data at the browser level. User applying for membership turn into shareholder of Good Data.

WeChange is a cooperative from Berlin and aims as becoming a kind of facebook for activists of change. On their open source platform they make available to activists and their groups a serie of interconnected open source tools for their work.