TED Talks-Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption

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Transcript:




So today I'm going to talk to youabout the rise of collaborative consumption.I'm going to explain what it isand try and convince you -- in just 15 minutes --that this isn't a flimsy idea,or a short-term trend,but a powerful cultural and economic forcereinventing not just what we consume,but how we consume.

Now I'm going to start with a deceptively simple example.Hands up -- how many of youhave books, CDs, DVDs, or videoslying around your housethat you probably won't use again,but you can't quite bring yourself to throw away?Can't see all the hands,but it looks like all of you, right?On our shelves at home,we have a box set of the DVD series "24,"season six to be precise.I think it was bought for us around three years ago for a Christmas present.Now my husband, Chris, and Ilove this show.But let's face it, when you've watched it once maybe, or twice,you don't really want to watch it again,because you know how Jack Bauer is going to defeat the terrorists.So there it sits on our shelvesobsolete to us,but with immediate latent value to someone else.Now before we go on, I have a confession to make.I lived in New York for 10 years,and I am a big fan of "Sex and the City."Now I'd love to watch the first movie againas sort of a warm-up to the sequel coming out next week.So how easily could I swapour unwanted copy of "24"for a wanted copy of "Sex and the City?"Now you may have noticedthere's a new sector emerging called swap-trading.Now the easiest analogy for swap-tradingis like an online dating servicefor all your unwanted media.What it does is use the Internetto create an infinite marketplaceto match person A's "haves"with person C's "wants,"whatever they may be.

The other week, I went on one of these sites,appropriately called Swaptree,and there were over 59,300 itemsthat I could instantly swapfor my copy of "24."Lo and behold,there in Reseda, CA was Rondoronwho wanted swap his or her"like new" copy of "Sex and the City"for my copy of "24."So in other words, what's happening hereis that Swaptreesolves my carrying company's sugar rush problem,a problem the economists call "the coincidence of wants,"in approximately 60 seconds.What's even more amazing is it will print out a purchase label on the spot,because it knows the weight of the item.Now there are layers of technical wonderbehind sites such as Swaptree,but that's not my interest,and nor is swap trading, per se.

My passion, and what I've spent the last few yearsdedicated to researching,is the collaborative behaviors and trust-mechanicsinherent in these systems.When you think about it, it would have seemed like a crazy idea, even a few years ago,that I would swap my stuff with a total strangerwhose real name I didn't knowand without any money changing hands.Yet 99 percent of trades on Swaptreehappen successfully,and the one percent that receive a negative rating,it's for relatively minor reasons,like the item didn't arrive on time.

So what's happening here?An extremely powerful dynamicthat has huge commercial and cultural implicationsis at play.Namely, that technologyis enablingtrust between strangers.We now live in a global villagewhere we can mimic the tiesthat used to happen face to face,but on a scale and in waysthat have never been possible before.So what's actually happeningis that social networks and real-time technologiesare taking us back.We're bartering, trading,swapping, sharing,but they're being reinventedinto dynamic and appealing forms.What I find fascinatingis that we've actually wired our world to share,whether that's our neighborhood, our school,our office, or our Facebook network,and that's creating an economyof "what's mine is yours."From the mighty eBay,the grandfather of exchange marketplaces,to car-sharing companies such as GoGet,where you pay a monthly fee to rent cars by the hour,to social lending platforms such as Zopa,that will take anyone in this audiencewith 100 dollars to lend,and match them with a borrower anywhere in the world,we're sharing and collaborating againin ways that I believeare more hip than hippie.I call this "groundswell collaborative consumption."

Now before I dig into the different systemsof collaborative consumption,I'd like to try and answer the questionthat every author rightfully gets asked,which is, where did this idea come from?Now I'd like to say I woke up one morningand said, "I'm going to write about collaborative consumption,"but actually it was a complicated webof seemingly disconnected ideas.Over the next minute,you're going to see a bit like a conceptual fireworks displayof all the dots that went on in my head.The first thing I began to notice:how many big concepts were emerging --from the wisdom of crowds to smart mobs --around how ridiculously easy it isto form groups for a purpose.And linked to this crowd maniawere examples all around the world --from the election of a presidentto the infamous Wikipedia, and everything in between --on what the power of numbers could achieve.

Now, you know when you learn a new word,and then you start to see that word everywhere?That's what happened to mewhen I noticed that we are movingfrom passive consumersto creators,to highly enabled collaborators.What's happeningis the Internet is removing the middleman,so that anyone from a T-shirt designerto a knittercan make a living selling peer-to-peer.And the ubiquitous forceof this peer-to-peer revolutionmeans that sharing is happening at phenomenal rates.I mean, it's amazing to thinkthat, in every single minute of this speech,25 hoursof YouTube video will be loaded.Now what I find fascinating about these examplesis how they're actually tapping intoour primate instincts.I mean, we're monkeys,and we're born and bred to share and cooperate.And we were doing so for thousands of years,whether it's when we hunted in packs,or farmed in cooperatives,before this big system called hyper-consumption came alongand we built these fencesand created out own little fiefdoms.But things are changing,and one of the reasons whyis the digital natives, or Gen-Y.They're growing up sharing --files, video games, knowledge.It's second nature to them.So we, the millennials -- I am just a millennial --are like foot soldiers,moving us from a culture of "me" to a culture of "we."

The reason why it's happening so fastis because of mobile collaboration.We now live in a connected agewhere we can locate anyone, anytime, in real-time,from a small device in our hands.All of this was going through my headtowards the end of 2008,when, of course, the great financial crash happened.Thomas Friedman is one of my favorite New York Times columnists,and he poignantly commentedthat 2008 is when we hit a wall,when Mother Nature and the marketboth said, "No more."Now we rationally knowthat an economy built on hyper-consumptionis a Ponzi scheme. It's a house of cards.Yet, it's hard for us to individually know what to do.

So all of this is a lot of twittering, right?Well it was a lot of noise and complexity in my head,until actually I realized it was happeningbecause of four key drivers.One, a renewed belief in the importance of community,and a very redefinition of what friend and neighbor really means.A torrent of peer-to-peer social networksand real-time technologies,fundamentally changing the way we behave.Three, pressing unresolved environmental concerns.And four, a global recessionthat has fundamentally shockedconsumer behaviors.These four driversare fusing togetherand creating the big shift --away from the 20th century,defined by hyper-consumption,towards the 21st century,defined by collaborative consumption.I generally believe we're at an inflection pointwhere the sharing behaviors --through sites such as Flickr and Twitterthat are becoming second nature online --are being applied to offline areas of our everyday lives.From morning commutes to the way fashion is designedto the way we grow food,we are consuming and collaborating once again.

So my co-author, Roo Rogers, and Ihave actually gathered thousands of examplesfrom all around the world of collaborative consumption.And although they vary enormouslyin scale, maturity and purpose,when we dived into them,we realized that they could actually be organized into three clear systems.The first is redistribution markets.Redistribution markets, just like Swaptree,are when you take a used, or pre-owned, itemand move it from where it's not neededto somewhere, or someone, where it is.They're increasingly thought of as the fifth 'R' --reduce, reuse, recycle, repairand redistribute --because they stretch the life cycle of a productand thereby reduce waste.

The second is collaborative lifestyles.This is the sharing of resourcesof things like money, skills and time.I bet, in a couple of years,that phrases like "coworking"and "couchsurfing" and "time banks"are going to become a part of everyday vernacular.One of my favorite examples of collaborative lifestylesis called Landshare.It's a scheme in the U.K.that matches Mr. Jones,with some spare space in his back garden,with Mrs. Smith, a would-be grower.Together they grow their own food.It's one of those ideas that's so simple, yet brilliant,you wonder why it's never been done before.

Now, the third systemis product-service systems.This is where you pay for the benefit of the product --what it does for you --without needing to own the product outright.This idea is particularly powerfulfor things that havehigh-idling capacity.And that can be anything from baby goodsto fashions to --how many of you have a power drill,own a power drill? Right.That power drill will be used around 12 to 13 minutesin its entire lifetime.(Laughter)It's kind of ridiculous, right?Because what you need is the hole, not the drill.(Laughter)(Applause)So why don't you rent the drill,or, even better, rent out your own drill to other peopleand make some money from it?These three systems are coming together,allowing people to share resourceswithout sacrificing their lifestyles,or their cherished personal freedoms.I'm not asking peopleto share nicely in the sandpit.

So I want to just give you an exampleof how powerful collaborative consumption can beto change behaviors.The average carcosts 8,000 dollars a year to run.Yet, that car sits idlefor 23 hours a day.So when you consider these two facts,it starts to make a little less sensethat we have to own one outright.So this is where car-sharing companiessuch as Zipcar and GoGet come in.In 2009,Zipcar took 250 participantsfrom across 13 cities --and they're all self-confessed car addictsand car-sharing rookies --and got them to surrender their keys for a month.Instead, these people had to walk,bike, take the train,or other forms of public transport.They could only use their Zipcar membershipwhen absolutely necessary.The results of this challenge after just one monthwas staggering.It's amazing that 413 lbs were lostjust from the extra exercise.But my favorite statisticis that 100out of the 250 participantsdid not want their keys back.In other words, the car addictshad lost their urge to own.

Now products-service systems have been around for years.Just think of libraries and laundrettes.But I think they're entering a new age,because technology makes sharingfrictionless and fun.There's a great quote that was written in the New York Timesthat said, "Sharing is to ownershipwhat the iPod is to the 8-track,what solar power is to the coal mine."I believe also, our generation,our relationship to satisfying what we wantis far less tangiblethan any other previous generation.I don't want the DVD; I want the movie it carries.I don't want a clunky answering machine;I want the message it saves.I don't want a CD; I want the music it plays.In other words, I don't want stuff;I want the needs or experiences it fulfills.This is fueling a massive shiftfrom where usage trumps possessions -- or as Kevin Kelly, the editor of Wired magazine, puts it,"where access is better than ownership."

Now as our possessionsdematerialize into the cloud,a blurry line is appearingbetween what's mine, what's yours,and what's ours.I want to give you one examplethat shows how fast this evolution is happening.This represents an eight-year time span.We've gone from traditional car-ownershipto car-sharing companies, such as Zipcar and GoGet,to ride-sharing platforms that match ridesto the newest entry, which is peer-to-peer car rental,where you can actually make moneyout of renting that car that sits idle for 23 hours a dayto your neighbor.Now all of these systemsrequire a degree of trust,and the cornerstone to this workingis reputation.

Now in the old consumer system,our reputation didn't matter so much,because our credit history was far more importantthat any kind of peer-to-peer review.But now with the Web, we leave a trail.With every spammer we flag,with every idea we post, comment we share,we're actually signaling how well we collaborate,and whether we can or can't be trusted.Let's go back to my first example,Swaptree.I can see that Rondoronhas completed 553 tradeswith a 100 percent success rate.In other words, I can trust him or her.Now mark my words,it's only a matter of timebefore we're going to be able to perform a Google-like searchand see a cumulative pictureof our reputation capital.And this reputation capitalwill determine our access to collaborative consumption.It's a new social currency, so to speak,that could become as powerful as our credit rating.

Now as a closing thought,I believe we're actually in a periodwhere we're waking upfrom this humongous hangoverof emptiness and waste,and we're taking a leapto create a more sustainable systembuilt to serve our innate needsfor community and individual identity.I believe it will be referred toas a revolution, so to speak --when society, faced with great challenges,made a seismic shiftfrom individual getting and spending towards a rediscovery of collective good.I'm on a mission to make sharing cool.I'm on a mission to make sharing hip.Because I really believeit can disrupt outdated modes of business,help us leapfrogover wasteful forms of hyper-consumptionand teach us when enough really is enough.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)