Over the past few decades, the world economy has undergone radical transformations, in part connected to the expansion of the ‘digital economy’, in part to the growing interconnection via the internet of the world of objects and physical processes. This ‘great transformation’ poses the dilemma on the capitalism’s ability to reconcile economic and social value, keeping together economic well-being, social cohesion and political freedom. The Economy of Collaboration can offer a contribution in this direction but requires courageous policies to mediate the various interests at stake, as well as to rethink and make more sustainable its development, by increasing the benefits not only for businesses but also for workers and consumers. In short, to create shared value. This book refers to a mode of organizing the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services based on cooperative relations. The main reference is to activities linked to the digital economy, since they are the emerging forms of a definitely older phenomenon, but which is expanding on an ever-wider scale thanks to new technologies. These collaborative activities can be regulated differently, along a continuum that ranges from the pole of market exchanges to that of generalized reciprocity, with various intermediate mixed forms.
How six industries are collaborating with competitors, society, and the public sector for competitive advantage No longer can we consume the equivalent of 1.3 Earths resources and expect to remain prosperous in perpetuity. We need a new economic paradigm, one that yields growth in a way that strengthens the global systems we rely on daily for survival, such as the global water, food, and energy systems. The Collaboration Economy—a model where the private, public, and civil sectors collaborate for prosperity that can last in perpetuity—is emerging. But what does this economic model look like? How does it work? How can companies survive and thrive in the Collaboration Economy? The Collaboration Economy provides easy to use frameworks and tools to enable leaders of industry, of government, and of society to lead the effort to align growth with sustainable development. Offers a plan for how the private, public, and civil sectors can successfully collaborate to steward resources, fortify global water, food, and energy systems, and spark a new era of prosperity at the same time Contains case study profiles of the leaders of the Collaboration Economy, including Unilever, GE, Coca-Cola, Nestle Waters North America, Grieg Green, and the European Parliament Written by Eric Lowitt, a globally recognized and sought after consultant, thought leader, and speaker in the fields of competitive strategy, growth, and sustainability, who has been named one of the Global Top 100 Thought Leaders on Trustworthy Business Behavior by Trust Across America
“Amidst a thousand tirades against the excesses and waste of consumer society, What’s Mine Is Yours offers us something genuinely new and invigorating: a way out.” —Steven Johnson, author of The Invention of Air and The Ghost Map A groundbreaking and original book, What’s Mine is Yours articulates for the first time the roots of "collaborative consumption," Rachel Botsman and Roo Roger's timely new coinage for the technology-based peer communities that are transforming the traditional landscape of business, consumerism, and the way we live. Readers captivated by Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, Van Jones’ The Green Collar Economy or Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point will be wowed by this landmark contribution to the evolving ecology of commerce and sustainability.
The acclaimed bestseller that's teaching the world about the power of mass collaboration. Translated into more than twenty languages and named one of the best business books of the year by reviewers around the world, Wikinomics has become essential reading for business people everywhere. It explains how mass collaboration is happening not just at Web sites like Wikipedia and YouTube, but at traditional companies that have embraced technology to breathe new life into their enterprises. This national bestseller reveals the nuances that drive wikinomics, and share fascinating stories of how masses of people (both paid and volunteer) are now creating TV news stories, sequencing the human gnome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding cures for diseases, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, and even building motorcycles.
The information age is over. For you to become successful in today’s economy, you have to build powerful, mutually beneficial relationships with the right people, who have the right skills and can properly complement your strengths. If you already had all the skills, connections, resources, financial backing and technology you needed to reach the top, you’d already be there. Today’s world moves fast. One person cannot possibly be an expert---or even stay informed---about all there is to know. The concepts, strategies and tactics detailed can be applied to home-based businesses, start-ups, and storefronts (both traditional brick and mortar and online). The Collaboration Economy clearly explains how to identify your strengths, acknowledge your weaknesses, and find the perfect match to make your dreams a reality in record time.
The New York Times–bestselling author describes how current trends will create an era when anything and everything is available for almost nothing. In The Zero Marginal Cost Society, New York Times–bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin uncovers a paradox at the heart of capitalism that has propelled it to greatness but is now taking it to its death—the inherent entrepreneurial dynamism of competitive markets that drives productivity up and marginal costs down, enabling businesses to reduce the price of their goods and services in order to win over consumers and market share. (Marginal cost is the cost of producing additional units of a good or service, if fixed costs are not counted.) While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring marginal costs to near zero, making goods and services priceless, nearly free, and abundant, and no longer subject to market forces. Now, a formidable new technology infrastructure—the Internet of things (IoT)—is emerging with the potential of pushing large segments of economic life to near zero marginal cost in the years ahead. Rifkin describes how the Communication Internet is converging with an Energy Internet and Logistics Internet to create a new technology platform that connects all. There are billions of sensors feeding Big Data into an IoT global neural network. Prosumers can connect to the network and use Big Data, analytics, and algorithms to accelerate efficiency, dramatically increase productivity, and lower the marginal cost of producing and sharing a wide range of products and services to near zero, just like they now do with information goods. The plummeting of marginal costs is spawning a hybrid economy—part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons—with far reaching implications for society, according to Rifkin. Hundreds of millions of people are already transferring parts of their economic lives to the global Collaborative Commons. Prosumers are plugging into the IoT and making and sharing their own information, entertainment, green energy, and 3D-printed products at near zero marginal cost. Students are enrolling in free massive open online courses (MOOCs) that operate at near zero marginal cost. Social entrepreneurs are even bypassing the banking establishment and using crowdfunding to finance startup businesses as well as creating alternative currencies in the fledgling sharing economy. In this new world, social capital is as important as financial capital, access trumps ownership, sustainability supersedes consumerism, cooperation ousts competition, and “exchange value” in the capitalist marketplace is increasingly replaced by “sharable value” on the Collaborative Commons. Rifkin concludes that capitalism will remain with us, albeit in an increasingly streamlined role, primarily as an aggregator of network services and solutions, allowing it to flourish as a powerful niche player in the coming era. We are, however, says Rifkin, entering a world beyond markets where we are learning how to live together in an increasingly interdependent global Collaborative Commons.
How networked technology enables the emergence of a new collaborative society. Humans are hard-wired for collaboration, and new technologies of communication act as a super-amplifier of our natural collaborative mindset. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the emergence of a new kind of social collaboration enabled by networked technologies. This new collaborative society might be characterized as a series of services and startups that enable peer-to-peer exchanges and interactions though technology. Some believe that the economic aspects of the new collaboration have the potential to make society more equitable; others see collaborative communities based on sharing as a cover for social injustice and user exploitation. The book covers the “sharing economy,” and the hijacking of the term by corporations; different models of peer production, and motivations to participate; collaborative media production and consumption, the definitions of “amateur” and “professional,” and the power of memes; hactivism and social movements, including Anonymous and anti-ACTA protest; collaborative knowledge creation, including citizen science; collaborative self-tracking; and internet-mediated social relations, as seen in the use of Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder. Finally, the book considers the future of these collaborative tendencies and the disruptions caused by fake news, bots, and other challenges.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY NC ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Collaborative Advantage offers a bold new take on the drivers and consequences of globalization, both for innovation in renewable energy industries and domestic politics. In an era of rapid international economic integration, how do countries interact, innovate, and compete in industries, like energy, that are fundamental to national interests? In Collaborative Advantage, Jonas Nahm examines the development of the wind and solar industries, two historically important sectors that have long been the target of ambitious public policy. As wind and solar grew from cottage industries into lucrative global sectors of geopolitical importance, China, Germany, and the United States each developed distinct constellations of firms with starkly different technical capabilities. The book shows that globalization itself has reinforced such distinct national patterns of industrial specialization. Economically, globalization has allowed domestic firms to specialize in specific activities because of new opportunities to collaborate with firms from abroad. Politically, new possibilities for specialization have allowed firms to repurpose existing domestic institutions for application in new industries. Against the backdrop of policy efforts that have generally failed to grasp the cross-national nature of innovation, the book offers a novel explanation for both the causes of changes in the global organization of innovation and their impact on domestic politics. As interdependence in global supply chains has again come under fire in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Collaborative Advantage challenges the notion that globalization is primarily about competition between nations, highlighting instead the central role of international collaboration in the global economy, particularly in clean energy industries critical to solving the climate crisis.
This book examines how digital technologies enable collaboration as a way for individuals, teams and businesses to connect, create value, and harness new opportunities. Digital technologies have brought the world closer together but also created new barriers and divides. While it is now possible to connect almost instantly and seamlessly across the globe, collaboration comes at a cost; it requires new skills and hidden ‘collaboration work’, and the need to renegotiate the fair distribution of value in multi-stakeholder network arrangements. Presenting state-of-the-art research, case studies, and leading voices in the field, the book provides academics and professionals with insights into the diverse powers of collaboration in the digital age, spanning collaboration among professionals, organisations, and consumers. It brings together contributions from scholars interested in the collaboration of teams, cooperatives, projects, and new cooperative systems, covering a range of sectors from the sharing economy, health care, large project businesses to public sector collaboration.
Today’s business environment is constantly evolving, filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity and driven by digital transformation, globalization, and the need to creating value through innovation. These shifts demand that organizations view contracting through a different lens. Since it is impossible to predict every what-if scenario in a transactional contract, organizations in strategic and complex partnerships must shift to a mindset of shared goals and objectives built upon a strong foundation of transparency and trust, working together to mitigate risk much better than merely shifting risk to the weaker party. Contracting in the New Economy helps you to not only develop this mindset – but also offers the practical tools needed to embrace the social side of contracting, enabling your organization to harness the value creating potential of formal relational contracts. Briefly sharing the theoretical foundations that prove relational contracting works, it goes well beyond theory by providing powerful examples of relational contracting principles in practice. In addition, the authors provide a practical and proven approach for helping you to put relational contracting theory into practice for your own relationships. First by providing a framework for approaching any contracting situation and helping organizations finding the best contract model for each situation. And then by sharing five proven steps you can take to create an effective relational contract for you own strategic and complex business relationships. For anyone involved in developing contracts —lawyers, in-house counsels, contract managers, C-level managers, procurement officers, and so on — this book will empower you to create powerful cooperative alliances that will help you reach —and surpass — your business goals in today’s dynamic new environment.
