Last week I wrote a heartfelt letter to you that our relationship has changed. I shared that I don’t want to breakup, but I want to have an open relationship. I don’t want to buy products. I want to rent, borrow, share, or swap products. The world has changed, and with it, our relationship. Brands are being disrupted by sharing. I know that it’s discomforting to hear that customers are now buying your products once, and then sharing many times with each other, because it means that your revenues will diminish. This movement, called the Collaborative Economy (see all my posts on this topic).
On the rise
So I decided to go through the experiment, so I could feel what you’re going through. I put my own family assets at risk just to feel disrupted. I put our cherished family car up for rental on RelayRide, a site that allows people to share their cars with neighbors. As the first person to own this car, I have an attachment to it, and have taken Oman Phone Number Data rather good care of it for many years. Saturday morning, a young Duke University student picked it up from me for the weekend. I didn’t know who he was, nor do we have any shared contacts. While RelayRide promised me that they screen renters and provide insurance.
I couldn’t but help
See a piece of me leaving as he drove off. It felt unnerving on many levels. First, I allowed a complete stranger to take my asset. I asked myself, “What’s he doing with it? Will it come back in the same condition? What about liabilities, such as accidents, traffic or unaccounted bridge tolls? Second, I was unnerved, because my training to Bulgaria Phone Number List be a good capitalist in business school did not prepare me for this new business model. Third, I worried about what my current insurance company would think. Finally, it was unnerving because most of our clients at the company that I own serves brands.
