We all need leaders, people we can look up to for guidance and council and set us on the right path to victory. You will find that we have people leading us in all walks of like for example, heads of state like the President or Prime Minister of a country or the principal in a school or the CEO of an organization.
We humans start off in life with our parents or guardians as leaders, who show us right from wrong and mould us into being independent human beings who can look after themselves. There are several other leaders who shape our lives throughout like teachers, mentors, bosses and sometimes even our friends. We might not acknowledge several of these people as leaders, but we do seek them out unconsciously to help keep us safe, to provide guidance, to help with our self-esteem and achieve success in life. …
The art of using the knowledge and contributions of a group of people to achieve a particular goal is not new. The National Audubon Society’s annual bird count has been around since the 1900s. The society organized people to count all the birds in the western hemisphere. And the Pillsbury bake-off, a 69-year old cooking contest by the Pillsbury company. The contest aimed to get American homemakers to share their beloved recipes and the stories behind them.
Both of these are instances of crowdsourcing to achieve a certain goal. And most probably you’ve been involved in some sort of crowdsourcing without actually realizing it. But using the same thing online is a new concept which has taken the world by storm. This particular phenomenon, named “crowdsourcing” is helping businesses fix their problems in a cost-effective manner. …
Red Auerbach, the legendary coach of the Boston Celtics basketball team once said, “some people believe you win with the five best players, but I found out that you win with the five who fit together best.”
A talented team might seem like a perfect fit, which will help your team reach glorious heights, but that is only on paper. If superior talent alone was enough, any sports team with an all-star dream team could win a championship. Take, for example, the English Premier League team, Manchester United. The Manchester United Football Club is one of the oldest and most prestigious professional football clubs, which competes in the English premier league. With over 20 league titles, 12 FA cups, 5 league cups and a record 21 FA community shields. …
The humans across the globe continue to consume goods and services in an unsustainable fashion. This is adding to the burden of our already overstressed planet. And the growth in population is adding to the troubles. Our overstressed planet has over 7 billion people consuming resources on a daily basis. And the more the population grows, there are more people who consume resources, hence the production and wastage of resources also increase. However, the emergence of the sharing economy is being touted as an important step, which might help in reducing the burden. …
We now know that we need an alternative to the existing economic systems of capitalism or socialism. We also established that an economic system based on holism could prove to be advantageous as well as sustainable. When we combine the aspect of regeneration, which has helped living beings and the natural ecosystem sustain for so long, into our economic system, it’ll help in creating a sustainable economic system, which will lead to healthy, adaptable and stable communities and bioregions in future.
However, we also need to consider the potential risks which could be associated with platforms based on the regenerative economy. After all, these platforms are still too new and could have issues like compliance with quality standards, insurance, licensing, taxes, employee protection etc. …
A new approach to bring about balance in the global economic system
Sharing is a concept that is as old as time itself, one that started as a result of altruistic social behaviour. We, humans, are social animals. From the beginning of time, human beings have sought the companionship of other humans as part of their own well-being. To put it simply, we are always happier around other people. As humans evolved, so too did the concept of a social circle. And as a result of the social circle, humans developed something called social behaviour.
A human’s social behaviour is how the presence of others influences the actions, thoughts, feelings and behaviour of people. And as the social behaviour in humans developed, humans discovered altruism, as a result of which they learned to share. The pre-historic humans started with food sharing and over time as communities evolved, people have learned to share their other possessions too. And the main reason that this altruistic behaviour flourished is trust. …
The millennials have a new way of doing everything. Simple things like work, employment and ownership are being redefined and the lines separating them are being blurred now. With digitization becoming more normal, sharing online have become easier leading to a societal shift. This and the rising cost of living gave way to the millennials coming up with a fresh perspective for doing business, dubbed the sharing economy.
Consider the example of Airbnb, the online property rental site. Ever since it was introduced, hotels are not the only option to stay at. People can now stay in a spare bedroom in some stranger’s house or camp out on someone’s sofa. And since 2008, the company, which transformed travel has rented out properties over 300 million times. …
We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give. - Sir Winston Churchill
Sharing has always been connected with emotional satisfaction and happiness. We are always told that the best way to share happiness is to share it with others. And we do it without any inhibition. But the same concept, which started out as a social movement is now poised to take over from the capitalist economy. This new phenomenon, said to be one of the biggest disruptors since the industrial revolution, is transforming the way we do business.
Consider the example of the giants in the sharing industry, Uber, AirBnB and Lyft. When it started around 10 years ago, we never expected these companies to scale to the heights that they’ve achieved now. But, today their combined valuation stands at a whopping $118 billion! But these are only a few companies in a field that has hundreds of thousands of start-ups. Are they all successful? …
As AirBnB turns 10 years old this year, it marks a major milestone for the new business phenomenon. Sharing pioneers like Uber and AirBnB have grown into a massive global industry. On an average, these platforms see millions of transaction occur every day. While both these sharing platforms have their corporate roots in the USA, they have spread their wings all across the world. Almost every country in the world has some sort of sharing platform.
The number of people participating in the global sharing economy increases every day. These people are driven by the lure of additional income, but they also want to do good for the environment. …
“Sharing is Caring,” this particular value is drummed into us right from the time we learn to speak. As kids, we learn to share everything freely among our friends and families. There was no concept of money exchanging hands to give or take something, it was just about emotional satisfaction. But then we grew up and we moved into further layers. The habit of sharing slowly gets distracted because of trust issues and commercialization. Now, it’s all about financial transactions.
The world that we currently live in allows a person to benefit only through economic growth and consumption of resources. We need other ways to gain benefits rather than endless consumption, which is taxing our already strained planet. It’s time that we learned to make do with what we have. And if we don’t have it, it’s time to learn to share. Humans have known about sharing since the beginning of time, our ancestors bartered goods and services without exchanging money. …
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