Above image: The Collaborative Economy marketplaces in the maker movement, sharing economy, p2p lending are quickly on the rise
[Definition of a two sided online marketplace: An online exchange that allows sellers to offer their goods and services, and for buyers to obtain information, often barter, and purchase offerings using internet technologies]
These marketplaces are disrupting traditional business.
Here’s what we’re seeing at the trend level and what it means to corporations:
- The Crowd Can Get What They Want From Each Other, Bypassing Corporations. These two-sided marketplaces are actively disrupting corporations. We have seen hotel chains fund lobbyists to influence policy to fight AirBnb. We have seen cities that have lost taxi revenues pass ordinances that make tools like Lyft and Uber illegal. In perspective, most corporations aren’t fully aware of this growing groundswell arising against them.
- It’s not New. It’s Native to The Internet. Which Means it’s Hard to Stop.
Craigslist was one of the first, and is often attributed as a cause of the demise of the newspaper classified business revenue. It sure has forced third-party sales teams to understand how to benefit, or be disrupted, by ecommerce. In fact, these are just examples of the broader impact of the internet, which is disintermediating traditional business flow and forcing middle men to react as monies are routed around them. - Marketplaces Are Emerging in Your Market, Amplifying the Disruption
We’re seeing these marketplaces in every niche, vertical, and segment in the market, and now they have a few things that are different:
[Disruption to Corporations: These marketplaces enable the crowd to get what they need from each other –bypassing traditional corporations]
Eight Examples of Two-Sided Marketplaces Disrupting Traditional Corporations
To bring this to life, I want to list examples of those these marketplaces (beyond simple Craigslist) are emerging in nine distinct verticals:
| Industry | Startup Examples | Who’s Disrupted |
| Transportation: | The industry to be impacted the most has been the mobility and transportation space. From Uber, Lyft, RelayRide, Sidecar, and many others, these tools enable on demand access to cars or a ride as a service. | Traditional taxi corporations and companies have cried foul, taxable revenue to airports and cities, and rental car companies who haven’t acquired or adopted these services |
| Hospitality: | New startups have emerged that enable the crowd to host people in local experienecs at their guest house or individual couches or rooms, these players include original player Couchsurfing, AirBnb, and OneFineStay for luxury rentals. Even hotel room sharing has emerged, I just learned of EasyNext. | The hotel industry has been disrupted. As a result, they’ve funded lobbyists to help protect their business model, public and consumer safety to educate and combat this growing trend. |
| Food Service: | A new class of startups is emerging that enable to people to turn their own kitchens into ‘restaurants’ for friends and strangers at a cost. EatFeastly enables the crowd to host dinner parties for inspiring or off work chefs, and make a profit. | While nascent, this will start to impact restaurants if people are able to self organize food events around each other at homes, parks, or offices, bypassing traditional restaurants. |
| Staffing and Talent: | One of the early models we saw emerge was online marketplaces of staffing tapping into remote workers from opportunity markets to developed markets. This includes eLance, Odesk, and even TaskRabbit and RedBeacon at a local level. For higher level skills PopExperts enables specific experts to find buyers. | Traditional business process outsourcing, consulting firms and staffing firms like Kelly Services, Manpower, and Robert Half agencies. At the local level, the Yellow pages or local listing sites like Craigslist are impacted |
| Office Rental: | Companies with excess office space, but are locked into long leases can now offer their desks, rooms, or offices on demand, generating new contacts and revenues. Players include Sharedesk, LiquidSpace, Pivotdesk, and more. | Traditional property management firms are impacted, real estate agents, hotel services for meeting rooms, and even the local coffee shop are disrupted as the crowd gets what they need from each other. |
| Design: | Graphic and web designers can now tap into a marketplace of buyers using websites like CrowdSpring and 99Designs that enable a marketplace to connect to each other. | I was covering this contraversial market a few years ago, and even participated on a panel at SXSW where long term formal designs cried foul, and even involved industry groups to comment, my coverage is here. |
| Consumer Packaged Goods: | Rather than buy products from a store, a neighborhood can now share goods and products with each other, rather than buy. Websites like Yerdle (who are founded by an ex-Walmart executive) and NextDoor which empowers neighborhood online discussions enable people to share and gift, rather than buy | Retailers are impacted as people learn to share among themselves –rather than buy. Season goods, sporting goods, transportation goods, kichen appliances, landscaping equipment and even cars are items likely to be shared rather than purchased. |
| Banks: | Rather than go to a traditional bank to obtain money, the crowd can tap into each other to get money, websites like LendingClub, Propser, and even micro loans like Kiva enable the crowd to loan each other money, eToro is an online community of traders that enables peer to peer advice to emerge after analyzing top traders in the crowd. On the startups side, Kickstarter disrupts traditional early funding models. | Traditional banks, and finanicial advisors are impacted as the crowd seeks to get what they need from each other. This has radical implications across every vertical that requires funding or loans including real estate, cars, colleges, and more. |
| Many more Industries: | Here’s a list of over 200 startups in the collaborative economy, across dozens of industries. With the rise in VC funding on this space, expect more to emerge | Nearly every industry, niche, and vertical is being disrupted. |
The Six Strategies Corporations Can Take to Address the Collaborative Economy
Right now, I’m seeing companies react in a few different ways, each with different levels of investment and outcome. Here are the scenarios, are far as I can see:
Right now, I’m seeing companies react in a few different ways, each with different levels of investment and outcome. Here are the scenarios, are far as I can see:
- Ignore it, and hope it goes away. An easy solution is to avoid it or don’t look at it. The concept is that not paying attention to this market will, hopefully, result in it going away. The risks are that, if it doesn’t go away, then your company will be behind those that have already adopted this.
- Fight it with policy, lobbying, or marketing. A common reaction is business model protection, and using lawyers, lobbyists or aggressive marketing and sales to counter this movement. While the costs of this effort are high, it’s hard to stop a movement that’s pinned off the internet. It’s an unstoppable force.
- Sponsor the startups. Some companies have sponsored these startups. For example we’ve seen Barclays Card sponsor London bike sharing, Citibank, and NBC in New York sponsor Yerdle. Brands can harness this movement for marketing and recognition, not to mention profit. This database lists the deployments.
- Acquire the startups. To date, we’ve seen smart companies like Avis (Zipcar) and Enterprise making acquisitions, showing the value of getting into this market at an early stage. The downside is that companies, like AirBnb, have been able to raise over $120 million in venture capitalist funding, increasing their value, making them an expensive purchase.
- Integrate your business model. Corporations can work with startups by enabling their own products to be shared and passed along in these new marketplaces. Patagonia has partnered with eBay to encourage consumers to buy used goods, and Scottevest apparel has done the same, promoting the growing eBay community from their own corporate webpage.
- Build your own marketplace.In the most advanced model, I expect a new class of corporations to host their own communities that enable customers to trade, rent and resell their goods and services in a brand hosted community, enabling new value for the brand, and offering new ways to extract value from the brand.
The above solutions are the strategies we discuss in the Crowd Companies council, that I founded and direct. So in summary, we’ve gone through a definition, reasons why this is important, examples of marketplaces disrupting corporations, and a six-stage maturity model demonstrating what corporations can and will do.
I don’t think the binary you imply (sharing wins, or sharing loses) is accurate — it’s won’t take over everything, it won’t die. As a result, I think most companies will pick a variant of your #2: Solidify their market position by focusing on the elements of what they do that are more professional, or more dependable, than the sharing economy. If the Sharing Economy takes 5% of your business but you grow the remaining 95% by 25%, you win.
#1: dinosaurs (only a matter of time before they are gone)
#2. incumbent disruptors (fighting for their old ways)
#3. supporters (perhaps also coat tail hangers)
#4. more money than vision (better keep the visionaries)
#5. champions (it’s good policy to collaborate)
#6. copycats or visionaries (Bill Gates / Steve Jobs – who was which?)
From the
We agree on the outcome Josh Bernoff. Remember the social media purists who said PR and advertising and journalism was going to die? Nope, they just integrated.
Keep in mind, that journalists, more aptly put, their employers, are absolutly struggling in this digital era, in great cause by social media.
Same logic path, different market.
Yes it is very important to make good strategies to boost up the market. Sometimes it requires lot of research and digging. But a good market research will always have good strategies.See more on this