The explosion of sharing economies like Uber or Airbnb is a small revolution, a process called uberization. According to Wikipedia, “uberisation is the process by which economic agents exchange under-utilised capacity of existing assets or human resources, while incurring only low transaction costs[1]”. It therefore bases itself on the importance of mobile technology, and puts in common traditionally personal belongings like a car in the case of Uber or an apartment in the case of Airbnb. There is no more “middle-men”, the provider and the customer are directly connected.
The influence of sharing economies in the global business is growing substantially. Uber is the world’s largest taxi company without owning anyone of them. Similarly, with about 3,000,000 lodgings in 191 countries, Airbnb is today valued at 30 billion dollars.
Different factors are used to describe uberization:
The first one is digitalisation[2]. As stated below, technology has today taken over our society. Anyone who lives without a smartphone will feel alienated from the society in which he lives in. Smartphones are today used in everything: watching the news, e-commerce, ordering a ride home from work, or even organising your next holidays. Therefore, Uber and Airbnb benefits from this vulgarisation of the mobile phone by providing an accessible digital facet.
The second one is sustainable development. Today, the idea of growing an economy but respecting the planet is very important. Sharing economies enable that. In example, Uber doesn’t produce new cars that can harm the planet: it only bases itself on the reutilization of cars that have now multiple purpose. Therefore, uberization enables to add value to already existing assets. Moreover, this is a plus for governments, who does not have to face the costs of managing new public resources.[3]
The last concept is workforce casualisation[4]. Thus, sharing economies offer secondary revenues that can be made without or with few sacrifices. For example, by renting your apartment via Airbnb whenever you are away from town, you beneficiate from your own assets without having to work to see cash flow.
In the sight of a 1st year student in Sauder, uberization is a light of opportunities. Sharing economies offers a diversity of entrepreneurial possibilities. Any personal belonging can now be shared in exchange of money. I hope to see this transition become even more important and maybe one day offer a totally new economic model, sustainable and efficient. Of course, there are some questionings about the unfair competition that are proposing sharing economies, as we have seen recently in London when the government decided not to renew its contract with Uber[5]. However, in my opinion, it will take a lot more to stop uberization.
[1] Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uberisation#Ethical_concerns
[2] Dennis Pennel, The ‘uberisation’ of the workplace is a new revolution, (Jul 2, 2015)
Available at http://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-jobs/opinion/the-uberisation-of-the-workplace-is-a-new-revolution/
[3] Tod Newcombe, Learning to Share: How Cities Are Benefiting from the Sharing Economy, (Dec14, 2014)
Available at http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/Learning-to-Share-How-Cities-Are-Benefiting-from-the-Sharing-Economy.html
[4] Dennis Pennel, The ‘uberisation’ of the workplace is a new revolution, (Jul 2, 2015)
Available at http://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-jobs/opinion/the-uberisation-of-the-workplace-is-a-new-revolution/
[5] Simon Jack, Now what next for Uberisation?, (Sept 22,2017)
Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41359327
