The Sharing Economy Is Gaining Ground

An interesting article on the collaborative consumption model.  Mark Suster’s take is built off of a common theme, as he states “necessity is the mother of all innovation.”  Meaning, businesses like Cohealo aren’t being built just to take advantage of the internet’s power to make money, we are designed to serve the basic need to drive down the cost of doing business in healthcare enabling more effective consumption of expensive resources, medical devices.  We see it as a necessity to make sure that healthcare is affordable for decades to come, for millions of Americans who are having a tougher time finding quality care and cost effective prices.  We do this out of love, not out of contempt.

Mr. Suster, seeing the whole picture, delivers some key points to why this trend is picking up speed.  “33% of the world’s population is now connected to the Internet, more than 70% of the world’s literate population will have a smart phone within four years (2017).”  What else is happening in the global market to demand change?  “50% of all youth in Greece and Spain – 34% in Italy and 17% in the US – are unemployed and if you take ‘under employment’ it is even worse.”  The economy is far worse than we want to admit, but in the end we don’t have to admit how bad it is – the youthful movement is able to harness technology in a way that turns existing business models on their heads.  This new generation will give up profit in order to run better social businesses – not something you hear from your dad’s company on Wall Street today.

By empowering the under or unemployed, these collaborative markets will begin to harness social awareness to the plight of so many people globally.  Due to the power of technology, any entrepreneur will be able to offer services to the world, not just their city, state or nation.  As Mr. Suster says, this will make businesses more flat, will reduce the physical barriers to participate, and will result in the delivery of products and services to a much wider global audience.  We are seeing this at Cohealo, but also with our brethren Airbnb, Lyft and Uber.  Removing unnecessary layers of management and control via technology collaboration has actually been quite liberating.

There are some fantastic quotes that I think we all need to think through as we enter into this time in history where transparency and collaboration are being demanded in so many areas of our lives like healthcare, finance, politics and education.  People want answers and people want to know how they can affect their society and how society is affecting them.

“(Collaborative consumption) it is the antidote to top down control.  It is open and empowering. But with empowerment also comes awareness of what others have that you don’t.  Which leads to disenfranchisement.  And rebellion.  Transparency can breed discontent.  Collaboration.  We’ve only just begun.” – Mark Suster

Cohealo is here, first to market in healthcare and leading the way in collaborative consumption.  We hope by opening the door to transparency we open the mind to efficiency and innovation that can truly redefine how health care is provided in the next decade.  We hope to be liberating and we hope to have the chance to talk with you and your health system in the near future about how sharing can be the difference in your next fiscal year.