What We Can Learn (and What We Can’t) From the Sharing Economy
The term “sharing economy” is thrown around in public discourse, and much has been written about how little “real sharing” is within it. When you let someone stay in your apartment for a fee, it is ultimately nothing more than a commercial transaction.
Right now, I’m reading The Business of Sharing by Alex Stephany, which is [yet another] profile of the sharing economy.
Stephany defines the sharing economy as “the value in taking underutilized assets and making them accessible online to a community, leading to reduced need for ownership of those assets.” By this definition, business models made with Creative Commons technically fall within it because sharing content means more people get more value out of it. Stephany goes on to talk about other important components of businesses in the sharing economy. One is that the communities associated with these businesses engage with each other above and beyond the transaction, and the other is that they offer “rich social experiences.” Both of these characteristics are consistent with the ways many endeavors involving CC licensing operate as well.
I recently discovered a Harvard Business Review article from January 2015, in which the authors argued that most of the sharing economy is really an “access economy.” The article goes on to argue that the idea of community is actually not an important element of these companies for consumers. I have no scientific evidence to back up that claim, but it is certainly consistent with my own thinking when I use Uber or Airbnb. I’m looking for convenience, not a “rich social experience.”
The idea of these businesses encompassing the “access economy” resonates with me because it precisely captures the fundamental difference between companies that facilitate “sharing” of physical goods and those that facilitate the sharing of music, writing, and other Creative Commons-licensed content. The former is about monetizing access to what is shared and the latter forecloses that option by definition. If someone stays in my apartment, it means someone else can’t stay there at that moment. That’s obviously not the case when I share this blog post — millions of you (ha!) can read this at the same time. Both types of sharing reduce inefficiencies and maximize the value in assets, but only one lets the owner of the asset extract money from the process.
In other words, they are very much different beasts. There are some parallels, but it’s not particularly useful to lump them together under the sharing economy rubric.
