Yvette Vignando of happychild.com.au recently attended Kochie’s Business Builder’s Boot Camp in Sydney and spoke about her experience: “The highlight for me was the presentation on collaborative consumption.” What is collaborative consumption? As a simple example, think of all the items in your home that you rarely use. A power drill, for instance, may be used for a total of 30 minutes throughout its ownership. Collaborative consumption focuses on usage rather than ownership. There are plenty of people who need to use a power drill for a few minutes but don’t necessarily need to buy one. This trend is evolving not only in the consumer market but also in the business world. TaskRabbit.com is one example of a business build around collaborative consumption. Yvette explained the model: “People who don’t want to go out and buy their dog food, or they don’t want to assemble their Ikea furniture, put out a task online, and then people bid for the opportunity to run that task. There was a student on there who was earning six-thousand dollars a month just running tasks.” GoGet CarShare is another example of a business that relies on collaborative consumption. According to the company’s website, “GoGet gives you all the benefits of a car – without the hassle and expense.” “Is there someone else who would like to use your car during the six hours a day that it sits in the driveway?” Yvette asked. This type of creative thinking has not only spawned new multi-million dollar businesses but has also allowed business to get creative with their resources. For example, not every business needs to buy an expensive printer or hire a copywriter. For some businesses, it just makes more sense to outsource printing and copywriting. Conversely, business may be able to generate additional revenue by outsourcing certain resources, which are underutilised.
“…not every business needs to buy an expensive printer or hire a copywriter. For some businesses, it just makes more sense to outsource printing and copywriting.”
“A lot of people don’t realise they have things that other people want to use but don’t necessarily want to own,” said Yvette. “Our definitions of what’s valuable are really changing, and the speaker [Rachel Botsman] was very inspiring. I love hearing about other people’s business success stories and different ways of thinking about business.” Botsman is the author of the book What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing The Way We Live. Collaborative Consumption was named by TIME magazine as one of the “10 Ideas That Will Change The World.”
Kochie’s Business Builder’s Boot Camp was supported by the HerBusiness.
