Collaborative Economics — or: which new paradigms are changing the world

While Uber, Spotify, AirBnb, Twitter and so many others are no longer recent evidences of a capitalism evolution that breaks, by innovating, the barriers of the “unthinkable” and gets to the “viable and opportune”, it is not wrong to say that we are facing — and, mostly, being part of — an irreversible inflexion point that comes from the economy to transform the society at its most powerful expressions.

The so called “Collaborative Economy”, we can finally say, has acquired enough traces that now it can be analyzed as an organized phenomenon that has in these companies just the vanguard of a self-evolutionary and functional system that, based on the efficient collaboration principle, may have no limits.

Although it may be naïve to compare quantitatively the present civilizing moment — in economic terms — with other historic inflexion points, such as the end of the nomadism, fundamental to the development of the technic, and the industrial revolution, when the humanity’s wealth curves finally became exponential, maybe it is possible to promote the dialogue of these time-points with the ones we are living now, in a more qualitative context — which is, by the way, the basis of this new paradigm. That is, although we are not talking about a huge growth era like the firsts, we are facing, in fact, a huge allocative revolution, that optimizes the role of the agents, reduces wastes, lowers or eliminates the so problematic transaction costs of our system and, finally, connects people — or ideas, purposes, products, expressions (…)!

In this perspective, maybe we have come to the time to say that this decade marks, on the economic timeline, a great representation of the so famous “Creative Destruction” — element that, according to Schumpeter, is the true responsible for any long term real growth; the “essential fact about capitalism”.

We watched, during the past years — each time faster — the development of the innovation at an intensity that potentiates itself and creates everyday more and more opportunities to its own reality. Beyond the internet — a paradigm considered as given since the beginning of the decade — and all the buzz around the sometimes-overrated-Silicon-Valley-Ideas, which, by the way, face an interesting consolidating moment — now we face a convergence process of the economic phenomena outside the pure and simple consumption, toward the experience, the customization, the cooperation and the assertiveness.

Some times scary, algorithms and crossing data systems optimize searches and connections to create the basis of a new economy that rests also on the elimination of intermediaries and on the consequent transformation of clients in producers — and vice versa.

The musical media, for instance, which has incorporated the digital format long time ago, now goes deeply in the virtual world, offering recommendations and customization possibilities that are incredibly assertive, based on the analysis of our contacts tastes and of our own history. The extension of this is also valid to pretty much every form of material choice — books, gifts, movies, etc. This is a new consumption stage, in which the seek of our own tastes goes through, paradoxically, the help of the others.

In the organizational environments, beyond the BigData, the corporate atmosphere also follows the development of this transition, lead by a generation whose leaders prioritize the creativity, the flexibility and the informality. From Steve Jobs to Zuckerber, there is already a legacy that says that impact is no longer made with huge bridges, buildings or automobiles, but with the enhancement of the relationships, of the design, of the efficiency and, mostly, of the experiences.

So, despite the evident optimism (possibly exaggerate) around this phenomenon, it is worth saying, still with a positive perspective, that we are living a unique moment: the substitution of the possession by the use; of the hierarchies by the networks; of the control by the empowerment; of the planning by the experimentation; of the strict privacy by the transparency; and, on the edge, of the profit by the purpose. It seems that in the wake of the capitalism dynamics, we have come finally to the intangible era.

Gabriel Brasil