Sharing economy / Community economy

The sharing economy is based on the principle that we don't use every device we own every hour of the day, and we don't want to buy everything we want to use. In this way, an exchange fund is created, which we can make available to each other for an appropriate fee.

The basic idea of the social economy or the sharing economy is old: if we have an object, tool, money, knowledge or free resource that we don't need 24 hours a day, we should give it to others to use. The statement is also true the other way around: we don't want to buy everything that we would otherwise only use temporarily. 

Before the age of the Internet, such systems operated in a narrow circle, usually without money movement, on a barter basis. For example, we went to help the neighbor pack bricks, and then they came to dig a garden. We lent our friend the ladder, but asked for his lawnmower.  

Digitalisation, the Internet is already able to connect many more people than such favor networks. In addition, it allows money to appear in the system as an asset of settlement. On the network, we have not only established relationships with acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances, but also with strangers. This leap was made possible by the recovery of trust, which was founded by the institution of community evaluation. 

The Internet and community assessment have thus paved the way for community solutions. This is how our online marketplaces, apartment rental and accommodation booking systems, car sharing, social financing portals and everything else that promotes the more efficient use of a good, knowledge or anything else came to be. 

In these models, the platform is built and maintained by a third party, who connects providers and searchers for a given service in return for a commission. Today, such a service exists for almost everything, so no matter what you do, it's worth investigating whether there is a community solution for the given problem on the Internet. 

However, it must be seen that what is a blessing on one side also carries risks. These solutions do not fit into the activities of the traditional market players of the relevant industry. The business model of the hotel industry, for example, is very different from that of apartment-sharing solutions. On the other hand, if a social economy service provider grows too large and enters a monopoly position in the market, then brokerage commissions start to rise. In fact, this typically only lasts until someone copies your system. 

Community assessment itself has also become a risk factor. In today's world, customers rely more and more on each other's opinions, so one bad review is enough and the image we want to create of our business is already damaged.