Collaborative Consumption at Digital Shoreditch

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Collaborating in London (your help requested)

Raj Singh, CEO, Sooqini@trajsingh, raj@sooqini.com

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sooqini.com• Part of the Gig

economy: The place to get stuff done– Share your skills with

your local community, and make money

– 10K+ people in London, requesting stuff, and doing stuff

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Some friends of Sooqi

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Definition

• Collaborative consumption: sharing access/use of things rather than outright ownership, getting stuff done together

• Not exactly a new idea, but technology is bringing it back to prominence, driven by the economy

• Mostly works well where some level of trust / social capital can be established between the participants

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UnDefinitions

• Some level of non-monetary motivation– Use local providers– Be environmentally friendly– Drive social change

• Light greens v. dark greens– Focus on changing the world, not profit

• We are (doomed) to repeat ourselves

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Leap of faith or BAU?

Self

Group

Known Unknown

CollconsTeam

Individual Co-working

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Global perspective

• London/UK participate in the global phenomenon• And have our own players too– GoCarShare, Hailo– OneFineStay, Room Central– Streetbank, Streetlife– ShareMyStorage, RentMyItems– Ratedpeople, peopleperhour

• Not forgetting the role of government (E.g. Boris bikes), UKTI TechCity, SEIS/EIS

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London

• Unique as a hub across many sectors – finance, tech, media, government, culture: ideal for cross-pollination and collaboration

• Meets the requirements for collcons: scale, capacity, abundance, trust between strangers

• 8.5MM inhabitants, ~<250K collcons active

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Uniquely London?

• No evidence so far, other than being the largest western European metro area

• Uniquely UK?– Laws and regulations, often quite ancient– Well-established competition in most industries– Stiff upper lip/don’t talk on the tube/NIMBY

– (landshare.net: share your allotment)

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Let’s make it happen

We at Sooqini would like to work with other London-based collcons companies in any field to advance the ideas of collaborative consumption.

Whatever the competitive dynamics, together we can bring benefit to all

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Final thought

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years, and underestimate the change that will occur in ten years. Don’t let

yourselves be lulled into inaction.”

William H. Gates III

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Collaborating in London (your help requested)

Raj Singh, CEO, Sooqini@trajsingh, raj@sooqini.com