To Create a Real Sharing Economy, Think Replication — Not Just Scale

Summary

When I began writing about the sharing economy in 2009, the eclectic array of struggling, communitarian-minded tech start-ups in San Francisco, California, were just one small part of a vast number of sharing innovations that made up what we at Shareable saw as an era-defining transformation in how people create value. This included open-source software, all the open X movements inspired by open source, Creative Commons, the resurgence of an economy based on solidarity, the rise of carsharing, bikesharing, coworking, cohousing, open government, participatory budgeting, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, hackerspaces, and more. We were in the midst of a sharing transformation.