by The talks and presentations on the sharing economy are proliferating and improving. New descriptors are emerging, from “couchsurfing” to “collaborative consumption.” The examples are moving beyond the early poster child – Zipcar –to Lyft and Sharedearth.com. Take a look at this excellent presentation by Lauren Moberz on Dashburst for more.
One of the benefits of hanging around for a while as a futurist is that you see ideas emerge from weak signal to mainstream (or not, we see lots of failures, too). I remember talking about ideas like the “gift economy” many years ago and trying to find the right words to describe what seemed to be emerging – and is now captured as the sharing economy. It’s important to remember what seems as an obvious concept in the present, was not so obvious in the context of say, a decade ago. One confronts the uncomfortable silence and puzzled looks of audiences. Fast forward to the present and now we see, well, it approaching the mainstream.
So how does one choose which weak signals to follow or least keep an eye on? One way is to look for links to existing trends, drivers, shifts that the signal might catch on with. Ask yourself, is the signal in harmony with the emerging future? Might it fit? In our sharing economy, a decade ago, we might have asked ourselves, does this fit? Probably not with the mainstream, “Long Boom” economy at the time. But it did fit with one of the alternative futures, which I call the Soft Path (you might call it something different – the key thing is a version of a transformational economy). And for me, as patient readers of this blog will know, it’s the underlying shift in values (highlighted in ConsumerShift) that is driving a move to a transformation Soft Path economy. Hope that helps a little – I’ve been hearing more interest in weak signals, so it’s been on my mind, and hopefully more to come on it. Andy Hines
Awesome post Andy, and very timely – thank you! 🙂