The New Rules of the Collaborative Economy

To grow–and established, traditional companies need to act soon in order to compete. That’s one of the key findings in The New Rules of the Collaborative Economy, a report I co-authored with tech researcher Alexandra Samuel, released today. The report is an update to Sharing is the New Buying, a 2014 report that, for the first time ever, mapped the prevalence of the collaborative economy and its impact on the business world. You can download the full report The New Rules of the Collaborative Economy, at no cost. What is the collaborative economy? The collaborative economy is an economic movement where common technologies enable people to get the goods and services they need from each other.

Peer to peer

Instead of buying from established corporations. You don’t have to look very far to see how disruptive the collaborative economy has become. Today, the world’s largest hospitality brand–Airbnb–owns not a single room or hotel Taiwan Telegram Number Data and is worth $25 billion. Uber, valued at over $50 billion, is the world’s largest taxi service–and it doesn’t own a single vehicle. Barely four years old, the online grocery shopping service Instacart is already worth $2 billion. Overall, the collaborative economy has produced 17 billion-dollar companies and 10 so-called unicorns. Collectively, sharing startups have already received $15 billion in funding–surpassing the social media space that spurred giants like Facebook.

Twitter and LinkedIn

How big is the collaborative economy? In one word: massive. We used Vision Critical’s customer intelligence platform and Germany Telegram Number List discovered that at least one in five customers now chooses sharing as their initial preferred option. The past year alone has seen an impressive growth in the collaborative economy. In North America, participation in this space has grown by 25 percent. More than 110 million people in the U.S. and Canada have participated in some form of sharing in the past year. The collaborative economy encompases many different categories and different forms of sharing. Last year, we looked at 11 categories; this time, we explored 13, adding online learning and Bitcoin to the list.