Innovation Workshop: Trust is behind the "shared economy"

The Investment agency column is a recently launched section of 36 Krypton, hoping to efficiently synchronize information between investors and entrepreneurs. Innovation workshops and GGV GGV Capital were first settled.

"Shared economy" is not a new topic in itself. Behind Airbnb's rapid expansion, not only is it subverting the traditional business model of the hotel industry, but more importantly, it has changed people's spending habits in a bold and unique way, and the effects have spread to other industries in a viral fashion. This creative subversive power is called "shared economy", which focuses on the reuse of surplus value of idle resources.

In fact, "sharing" is not a new concept, but the use of business models to share, in the early days of Internet development is difficult to imagine. On the one hand, because the network is popular enough to quickly series different strangers; second, sharing in fact originally only exists in some social network, the most direct example is the "borrowing" behavior between friends, in the internet does not have enough real name, identity, can not generate a trust environment, it is difficult to nurture the trust of genes.

Viral transmission in a shared economic model

However, the value of the network in the real economy has a very important amplification factor, very few people mentioned, that is, the shared activity. The internet will millions hundreds of millions of users, but if only to stay in the dissemination and interaction of information, it is an efficient amplifier of economic operation. But the shared activity based on the premise of trust is the igniter that activates the real economy.

Like a trip to a place, a night at a friend's house, this was originally based on the behavior between acquaintances, but was Airbnb use of such a concept, developed into a business model through the Internet; Similarly, Uber can also imagine that you borrow a car with a friend, or you suddenly have something. Friends would like to give you a ride, the concept is very close , but Uber to charge, but friends will not ask you for money.

So, if you're starting from "the way you interact with friends or acquaintances", think about the idea of a shared economy. For example, if you borrow money from a friend, is there a platform around which a service is a mutual financing between friends? Or is it a loan platform between strangers? This is actually a peer-to-peer financial platform.

From the behavior of friends inviting each other home to dine, whether there can be a series of different strangers dining, sharing the business model. Or, you and your friends will borrow books, then through the "sharing" what kind of economic form? The good sisters will send each other to wear the clothes, or the maintenance product, or the ornament, the bag, the same concept, whether can have what kind of commercial form to produce?

More extended to deduce, if the relationship definition is not so intimate, but to relax some, then, enterprises and enterprises, enterprises and individuals, NPO and NPO, the company's internal colleagues, students and students in the school ... However, in the chain of social networks, it is possible to use the concept of "network" + "sharing" to produce a new form of business model.

Innovation Factory recently cast a series of projects on the sharing of the economy, which can be disclosed is haha carpool, daily use of cars and housing production and marketing crown:

The core of "shared economy" can flourish is how to build trust. Because the degree of shared activity depends entirely on the establishment of trust or the improvement of the training mechanism. "The relationship of mutual trust between people" must be established and shared behavior will arise. This is like teamwork, the boss gives employees full security, the team's cooperation and efficiency will be greatly improved.

Game and Trust

The degree of trust will change as the number of games increases. In a game, a member may benefit the other's sharing strategy, and use the strategy of not sharing to gain some improper benefits; But at the same time, the member's confidence in other members of the member will decline, and the members of the shared strategy will increase their trust in other members. After a long game, better game results can be obtained. But the network effect brings a huge amount of unfamiliar users, there is no room for the growth of many games, that is to say, the official intervention is similar to Uber or Airbnb gradually expand and perfect, the establishment of trust is the premise of sharing, both are not two or three times of the relationship, but directly as the Power Index effect.

If you want to develop a shared economy-oriented business behavior, as long as you can make the participants feel at ease and feel the risk is low (or even risk-free), feel reliable and secure, then, once the idea succeeds, there will be a lot of people willing to invest and automatically develop more efficient ways to share.

There are many ways to create a trusting environment, such as the mechanisms we know, such as evaluation, recommendation, reporting, guidance, etc. There are also important tools such as personal presentations, typical examples of which are Couchsurfing's personal homepage. A good personal homepage means having enough information for others to refer to, because people are more likely to trust the people they know. Some users also talk about the sense of security they have when they see a variety of hobbies described on their home page. For couch owners, they often choose to ignore when they see that the home page of the user who sent the invitation is in a relatively blank state.

On the other hand, when users search for sofa owners who can provide accommodation, they tend to offer "couch" invitations to people who are similar to themselves. Many users mentioned in the interview that when they see other couchsurfing members also have the same preferences, there is a resonance, those online strangers also turned into a person with similar ideas. The discovery of the same point further promoted the formation of trust among members.

Dan Hoffer, one of Couchsurfing's founders, talked about web design:

The problem on the personal page is to be able to better show people's true self, and it will contribute to building trust when people's inner qualities are displayed.

In addition, the humanization of service and attention, the overall quality of contact, the use of user-friendly interface, customer service approach to customers and many other links, including the future of possible innovation, are the necessary means to promote the establishment of trust.

Of course, the establishment of trust sometimes may not be the founding of the organization can be shaped, social atmosphere, customs, economic environment, religious beliefs and so have a great impact, so in a more open, more trust based on the region to carry out the sharing of the economy, naturally can get the faster chance of success.