Sharing - potential for entrepreneurs and customers

The sharing economy is explosive

"The idea of ​​sharing has explosive power, in a positive sense. It creates a breach in the consumer world society. »More time than stuff« is the current popular saying for it. Time prosperity instead of wealth. Prosperity can be something qualitatively different than primarily material goods. Enjoying nature, art, beauty, learning, occasional silence, the ability of the individual to relate to themselves and, last but not least, the certainty of being part of a vibrant community."

Borrowing is the new buying

"In 2000, Jeremy Rifkin propagated the 'Access Society'. Owning is cumbersome, he argued. It is much more intelligent to merely use the products. Others call it the 'Share Economy' or 'Collaborative Consumption'. The automobile -Sharing is the best-known example of this movement.

In the past we usually associated consumption with the possession of goods. This type of consumption consumes resources. We know that the visible resource consumption - that is, what you can see from the consumption - is only a small part of the resources that are actually used. If we also consider the ecological rucksack, the actual consumption of resources is many times higher. With intelligent usage concepts, on the other hand, the bill looks much cheaper."

Renting a vacation home, picking up a sibling's used clothes, or sharing a fruit and veg area are all examples that are no longer too new to society. Even workplaces (shared workspaces) are now shared happily and flexibly. The foodsharing platform has set itself the task of saving food by saving overproduced food from the dustbin and distributing it via so-called food sharers.

Another example is the pumpipumpe model . The company offers stickers depicting many different items. These are intended for your own mailbox to signal your neighbors which items can be borrowed. This not only reduces the use of resources through less used consumer items, but you also get to know your neighbors along the way.

Sharing Thought - Opportunities for Entrepreneurs

"One can therefore dare the thesis: In the past, the entrepreneurial opportunities for entrepreneurs lay in the production of products and services, today they lie - especially for ecologically committed entrepreneurs - in the production of benefits. And that can also arise from products that you shares with others. Economically, community consumption only plays a minor role. But intelligent usage concepts have a future."

Editor's note: The paragraphs in quotation marks are from the book " David versus Goliath" by Günter Faltin