What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

Product service systems and redistribution markets are two systems that lead us to rethink the reasons and way we consume products and services. But what about the less tangible and more personal assets that make up our day-to-day lives? What about things like our knowledge, time, workspaces, creativity, money, homes, gardens, and other social spac

Ezio Manzini is a professor of industrial design at Politecnico di Milano and a thought leader on strategic design for sustainability. He breaks down the process of designing what he calls collaborative service systems into four critical design components: fluidity of use, replication, diversified access, and enhanced communications support.8 Manzi

providers. Xerox (photocopiers to document services), Steelcase (office furniture to office furnishing systems), AT&T (phone products to communication packages), Pitney Bowes (postage products to mail management systems), and IBM (hardware and software goods to business solutions) all have made the core purpose of their business to sell the fun

Sociologist Robert K. Merton identified five sources of unintended consequences: ignorance, error, immediate interest, basic values, and self-defeating prophecy. Two of these sources are particularly relevant to hyper-consumption: first, ignorance (it’s impossible to anticipate everything); and second, the imperious immediacy of interest.

Today reputation serves not only as a psychological reward or currency, but also as an actual currency—called reputation capital. We

“you bring out that goodness in people if you create organizations that are fundamentally built on values of honesty.”

The fourth ingredient in Manzini’s design thinking is “enhanced communications support.” Part of the power of Collaborative Consumption is that we possess many of the resources—from actual goods to human talent—to meet our needs. We just need to find ways to coordinate and derive value from them.

community among members, and to tailor recommendations to individual tastes.

we want not the stuff but the needs or experiences it fulfills.