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Collaborative consumption: Geoff Anderson explores what businesses can learn from this new economic model.

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorAnderson, Geoff
PositionGENY

Traditional ways of doing business are being disrupted in a variety of ways, shaped by changes in technology and the rise of peer communities. One of these, collaborative consumption - an economic model based on sharing, swapping, bartering, trading or renting access to products as opposed to ownership - is reinventing not just what people consume, but how they consume it.

Championed by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers in their 2010 book What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, the concept made Time Magazine's ten ideas that will change the world in the same year. From marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist to emerging sectors such as social lending site Zopa and carsharing site Zipcar, collaborative consumption has developed into numerous strands.

The impact of the financial crisis, which has limited lending and investment opportunities, has also fuelled enthusiasm for "peer-to-peer" exchanges, whether it's space, goods, skills, money or services. The collaborative approach even extends to consumers helping to develop a product or service in its infancy.

Starting a new company is very daunting, and in the tech space you need to move quickly before something else comes along and takes away your competitive advantage. PixelPin, a new mobile security business, which I started last year, is using a number of collaborative techniques to move from a standing start a lot quicker than would have been possible if we had adopted traditional business methods.

PixelPin won a place into a business accelerator called Wayra, run by Telefonica, along with 15 other companies last June. The months here have felt like running a business inside an MBA course, with the significant help and mentoring we are receiving. We now have a series of mentors who have influential positions in their own companies and who are willing to spend their own time...

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