The emerging sharing economy in Europe: fast growth , but culture matters

Here are some takeways from the successful Ouuishare Europe conference on the Sharing Economy, held in the wonderful co-working place The Mutinerie, a must-place to visitors to Paris, excerpted from Benjamin Tincq:

(original article has links and videos)

1. The conference report

“The “use” side of the Collaborative Economy, whether you call it Collaborative Consumption or the Sharing Economy, has been spreading across the globe and industries at a tremendous rate, and shows no sign of slowing down. However we observe a critical role of culture and local specificities in how people are sharing, and lessons from the local OuiShare Connectors are a powerful insight for entrepreneurs with a global perspective.

In Spain for instance, Albert Canigueral, founder of ConsumoColaborativo, identified shared mobility, kids-related services, p2p education, crowdfunding (even for the commons) and time banks and as the most vibrant local sectors, while WiFi sharing is gaining momentum.

Thomas Berman, co-founder of harDU.no (goods sharing), told us that the high level of trust among people in the Nordic Countries should represent a critical enabler for the local Sharing Economy. Nordic societies, however, still strongly value individual ownership, and the tension between these two dynamics will be interesting to follow in the near future.

“Germans are very sensitive about sustainability, which is a good thing for sharing; the key challenge is in trust between strangers”, said KoKonsum and AutoNetzer co-founder Daniel Bartel.

When looking at Italy instead, you see a rising interest in the maker/craft/opendesign projects such openwear or Bottega21, which are that are tightly related to italian artisanal traditions.

In this new economy based on internet-enabled offline interactions, the country perspective might however not be specific enough. Understanding the local perspective is the purpose of Collaborative Cities, a webdocumentary on the Collaborative Economy by Maxime Leroy, powered by OuiShare. Maxime will travel in the most vibrant cities to meet local entrepreneurs and change-makers of this new economy, showcasing their initiatives to the world.

A quest for meaning and community

A key lesson that successful collaborative models have told us so far, is that one of the main driving forces of this new economy goes beyond the search for profit or sustainable lifestyle aspirations: that is meaning, belonging and connectedness.

La Ruche Qui Dit Oui empowers food communities by providing the means for consumers and producers to connect at the local level, providing more than the simple access to good food, and fostering human interaction. As Marc-David Choukroun puts it:

We connect people, but everything is done by the community.

The Parisian coworking space Mutinerie provides more than flexible working facilities for freelancers. Its founders, les mutins, seek to connect the local Social and Digital Innovation community by providing a hub for meaningful conversations, explained Antoine van den Broek. The OuiShare Summit is a great example of such events, bringing together different community circles intersecting in that space.

When Magali Boisseau founded BedyCasa, she was enabling her community (her friends, and then the friends of her friends, and then…) to travel by homestay, creating human connections between the guest and the host, as an alternative to impersonal hotel experiences.
Trust between peers as a critical enabler

When people connect online to share offline, they face a form of social risk, which could range from having your car stolen to spending a night at some creepy guy’s place. To engage in such transactions requires the establishment of trust with between strangers.

P2P room renting service AirBnB achieves this with a combination of detailed profiles, user ratings, references, social proximity (i.e. friends in common) and the coverage of users’ property by financial guarantees, explained Olivier Grémillon, CEO for France, Belgium and Morocco.

Furthermore, why should not we take advantage of existing social dynamics? Juho Makkonen suggested to leverage both online networks and offline interactions, and to tap into existing communities as trust facilitators for the Collaborative Economy.

The open source platform he is building, ShareTribe, allows members of, say, a university campus, to share goods, services, rides or places in a trusted local environment.

Production is getting collaborative, too

Changing Consumption patterns with collaborative dynamics has brought the idea of peer-to-peer in the spotlight, but it’s not enough. In a very inspiring talk entitled Towards a Cooperative, Small-Scale, Local, P2P Production Future (also available in Spanish), our OuiShare Roma Connector and friend Simone Cicero drew the picture of a Collaborative Production future, connecting ideas and concepts of leading thinkers such as Umair Haque, Michel Bauwens, John Robb and Douglas Rushkoff, among others.”

Read the rest of the article here!

2. Watch this video with Simone Cicero’s talk on peer production: