The Many Names of the New Economy

It’s hard to talk about something when no one can agree on what to even call it.

In my work I’ve taken note of at least 50 different names for the economy today.

I began collecting these and even writing about them in my earlier post It’s a New Economy! … Or is it? I find it interesting the word economy itself comes from the late 15th century Greek word meaning household management.

Note: there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this list is not all of the names people are using. These are just the ones I’ve come across so far that were not entirely trivial uses. There’s no doubt I’ll be adding to it as time goes on.

So without further ado…

1099 Economy. Named for the IRS tax forms — there is a whole series of 1099 forms available. These are used to report income other than wages, salaries, or tips. You’d typically use a W-2 form for that. You can think of the W-2 Economy as the Old Economy.
Application Economy. Or sometimes shortened to just the App Economy. It is an increasingly software-driven world we live in and in this instance that software, including the apps on your smartphones, are an important engine behind it.
Attention Economy. I wrote about this one earlier in the post Explain Attention Economy and why do I care?
Automated Economy. Or Automation Economy. I actually prefer that one but I seem to come across the first variation more often. I wrote about this one earlier as well in the post The Automation Economy and why do I care?
Bot-based Economy. From the word robot but usually used to mean a small software program that does something very specific and is often hooked up to other small software programs to accomplish something.
Capitalism 2.0 Economy. This one should fairly obvious and is a result of our tendency to name everything new as whatever 2.0. I haven’t come across this one too often.
Caring Economy. Unlike the last one, this term is very popular. There was a very good post last May by Riane Eisler on HuffingtonPost that rang several of the bells I’ve been talking about, The Robots are Coming: How a Caring Economy Is the Best App for a Shrinking Job Market. Caring, in this case, is usually centered on people and often the environment. For me, it overlaps Meaning Economy and Purpose Economy a good amount.
Circular Economy. You will find this term used in true economics circles especially around the European Union lately. Calling it recycling, even on a huge industrial scale, vastly oversimplifies it. But basically, use the leftovers or byproducts of what you consume as the inputs to production.
Co-creation Economy. When a company depends on its customers to help generate its products you end up with innovation or creative ideas that the company itself could not have produced alone. Wikipedia is a good non-profit example. HuffingtonPost and Forbes online are good for-profit ones since most of their articles are written for free by people who do not work for them.
Collaborative Economy. This is a fairly popular name and while it doesn’t explain or cover all facets of what we regard as the new economy (what does?) it represents a pretty healthy slice. You can find its use in a variety of place but Jeremiah Owyang at Crowd Companies (who I used to read when he was at Forrester) has what I think is the best collateral. I recommend his post The Collaborative Economy Defined.
Connection Economy. Seth Godin‘s been using this concept for several years now. It’s all about relationships, who you know, and how you connect or interact with them.
Creative Economy. Made famous in the best-selling book back in 2001 by John Howkins. The subtitle says it well: How People Make Money from Ideas.
Digital Economy. Computers and the Internet will rule the world.
Eco-Economy. Much the same as the Green Economy coming up. There was a seminal book, oddly also in 2001, by Lester Brown.
Etsy Economy. One of two somewhat popular names that reflect a company that has changed the economics of our society (Uber being the other, of course). However, it represents more than just the one website. The idea of making and selling your wares on the Internet without having to own a storefront is not exactly new. Like eBay before it, more and more people are now using Etsy to make their living.
Experience Economy. I believe this is one of the most important facets of the changing economy and its impact on society is huge. Wikipedia does a great job defining it. The term Experience Economy was first described in an article published in 1998 by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, titled “The Experience Economy”. In it they described the experience economy as the next economy following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, and the most recent service economy. […] Pine and Gilmore argue that businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers, and that memory itself becomes the product — the “experience”. More advanced experience businesses can begin charging for the value of the “transformation” that an experience offers, e.g., as education offerings might do if they were able to participate in the value that is created by the educated individual. This, they argue, is a natural progression in the value added by the business over and above its inputs.
Freelance Economy. Absolutely one of the more popular due to its rapidly increase into our culture. In fact, this is the future of work in a nutshell. I talked a bit about its current state in an earlier post, The Growing Desperation Economy — which you’ll notice is not on my list but only because it’s meant to be pseudo-sarcastic and I’m the only one saying it. So far.
Frugal Economy. Times are tough and most of us have to tighten our belts. Is it really a type of economy and is it really new?
Gift Economy. Don’t see this pop up too often but there’s been a good amount written about it.
Gig Economy. You see this one a lot. More or less synonymous with 1099 Economy and Freelance Economy.
Green Economy. See Eco-Economy.
Internet Economy. See Digital Economy.
Irregular Economy. What we used to call the underground economy which included barter and other means to avoid taxes etc. This term is an attempt to avoid the negative connotations and often illegality associated with underground.
Knowledge Economy. Value derives from information. Intellectual capital, if you will.
Leisure Economy. Once computers, automation, and robots are doing a lot more of our work, we will have time to spend on other things. Which will effect further changes into that economy. Also the title of a book five years ago by Linda Nazareth.
Local Living Economy. We’re seeing an emergence of local-focused initiatives these days in everything from farm-to-table food to close to home manufacturing and employment causes. If the bottom falls out of the oil markets, as someone is always predicting it will, then I think this concept will be the star of the show.
Meaning Economy. Do things that matter, that make the world a better place, that leave the park a bit cleaner than you found it. See also Purpose Economy and Caring Economy.
Membership Economy. We already have opt-in services, like Netflix for example, that digitally mimic club memberships, like Costco. This is a growing type of business model. Also known as a Subscription Economy.
Network Economy. One of the original stars of this game. I first read about this concept in a Kevin Kelly article in Wired Magazine, New Rules for the Wired Economy more than twenty years ago. Everything’s connected and the scale is global thanks to technology.
New Economy. Collective bucket for the economy in contrast to the Old Economy.
Open Source Economy. A bit like Sharing Economy, the premise is that people both consume and help produce community-owned goods and services. I’m not aware of any successful endeavors outside of computer software.
Outcome Economy. At the risk of offending someone, this one’s very consultant speak with the subtle fragrance of snake oil. Rather than selling goods and services, companies sell results. Like the old business school slogan, “Don’t sell drills, sell holes.” You say tomato, I say tomato.
Platform Economy. This is where companies sell the means to an end rather than the end itself. Uber and Etsy are great examples. The company sells use of their platform and people use it to transact sales of their goods and services. This is a good example of where technology is changing the game.
Post-capitalism Economy. Yeah, yeah. See Capitalism 2.0. The idea of capitalism isn’t going anywhere soon. Where I’ve seen this term used effectively is when it denotes a more altruistic motive and means than pure greed-is-good only-money-matters organizations.
Post-growth Economy. I’ll let Wikipedia handle this one. Post growth (also known as post-growth) is an overarching approach to global futures that looks to proactively respond to the limits-to-growth dilemma — the fact that, on a planet of finite resources, economies and populations cannot grow infinitely.
Post-industrial Economy. As in: after the industrial era comes this.
Purpose Economy. Aligns with Meaning Economy and in some cases Caring Economy. Doing what we do for a better world and making money at the same time. Singing my song.
Regenerative Economy. See also Green Economy and Eco-economy. Regenerative works on the theory that the earth and the sun regenerate their value, i.e. the sun will shine again tomorrow and we should use as much of it as we can because it’s essentially free and self-replenishing.
Relationship Economy. Like the Connection Economy.
Robot Economy. Self-explanatory. See also Automated Economy.
Second Economy. This one comes to us from the consulting firm of McKinsey & Company several years back. It alludes to a more hidden, digital economy functioning alongside the one we have historically been able to see and touch.
Sharing Economy. The concept boils down to the reuse of excess capacity. Uber is making money from the normally unused portion of a car’s time. That is to say, I already have the car. I’m paying for the car regardless. I’m not using it for my own benefit all of the time. How about I make some money from it and “share” that excess capacity with someone else? For a fee, of course. There is debate around this concept as you might imagine. Is that really sharing? Or would letting you borrow my car when I’m not using it for free be more of a sharing example?
Slack Economy. Alternate term for Sharing Economy that tries to more accurately reflect the reuse of an asset’s slack time. I came across it reading a piece by Nick Price.
Steady-state Economy. The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy defines it as: A steady state economy is a truly green economy. It aims for stable population and stable consumption of energy and materials at sustainable levels.
Subscription Economy. See Membership Economy.
Sustainable Economy. Simply put, rather than use up all of our resources we figure out how to replenish them as we go or use resources that don’t run out like wind and sun. Everything from food sources to the paper companies planting trees in their wake.
Technology Economy. Almost redundant. The impact of technology on today’s economy is almost absolute. It’s changing the world faster and more dramatically than any comparable force in modern history.
Uber Economy. Presumes the mechanics and business model of a company like Uber is scalable to other businesses and can be profitably sustained across the globe. The growing troubles Uber has been having around the world, both from the legal system and people protesting against them, could soon change this model in unanticipated ways.
We Economy. As opposed to a Me Economy. See also Sharing Economy, Caring Economy, Meaning Economy, and Purpose Economy.
Wisdom Economy. This is meant to reflect an evolution and natural progression in the Data->Information->Knowledge->Wisdom pyramid sequence. The question is, are we currently in the Information Economy or Knowledge Economy (see earlier)?

Quite the list! And as I said earlier, these are just the ones I’ve made note of.

Do you know other non-trivial names to add? Let me know!

Originally published at villagefuturist.com on September 21, 2015.