Umair Haque Edge Economy RSS Feed

Edge Patterns: From Owning to Sharing

7:32 AM Wednesday December 17, 2008

Tags:Economy, Recession, Strategy

Hertz imitates Zipcar and makes cars shareable -- nice move. This is a killer example of a radical edge pattern: from ownership to sharing. Yesterday, we built advantage on owning assets. Tomorrow, we will build advantage by sharing assets.

Hertz's move is, of course, potentially disruptive in a recessionary environment, because microchunking cars offers significant efficiency gains across the value chain. But the really interesting part?

We talked not so long ago about bringing new DNA to Detroit. One of the questions we discussed was: how could we bring open-source principles, like sharing, to a moribund auto industry? This is a nice start.

The larger economic point is this: the pressure for sharing in a hyperconnected world is too strong to resist. It's not a fringe effect, relegated to geeks and hippies -- it is one of the foundations, as we've been noting, of next-generation value creation.

And its doubly vital in a world where the fabric of value creation is breaking apart.

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Comments

Great idea. I imagine you've seen the "ocean of bikes" outside train stations in places like Amsterdam. Some European cities now have formal procedures in place for bike-sharing, meaning you pick any bike, don't even bother searching for yours. Bring it back when you're done.

Why not with cars?

Ward
Cusco, Peru
www.lifeinperu.com

- Posted by Ward Welvaert 
December 17, 2008 10:01 AM

A lot of the previous schemes (eg bikes) foundered on cheat behaviour, need to find systems to keep this to a minimum especially if ther are high value assets involved.

- Posted by alan p 
December 17, 2008 1:46 PM

Umair,

I am a great believer in the "from ownership to sharing" pattern. And I am happy to see Hertz moving in this direction - this has a huge disruptive potential. "Growth" in the auto industries (producing more cars) being replaced with "growth" in convenient and healthy transportation for all of us - cheap, everywhere, no maintenance, car type matching the needs of the moment, less polution, less space (parking), etc...

I wrote about a year ago (including in comments here on your blog) about a model that goes one step further - the Zipcar model - but without the centralized ownership of the cars. Here is my post: http://sotirov.com/2008/02/11/one-more-thing-the-internet-could-disrupt-car-ownership-and-sales/

Emil

- Posted by Emil Sotirov 
December 17, 2008 2:07 PM

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Umair Haque

Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business model, and strategic innovation.

Prior to Havas, Umair founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that helped shape the strategies of investors, entrepreneurs, and blue chip companies across media and consumer industries. Bubblegeneration’s work has been recognized by publications like Wired, The Red Herring, Business 2.0, and BusinessWeek, and in Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, to which Umair was a contributor.

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