The economy we know today comes from a history of changes. First in the middle ages, people worked alone. I cut my own tree, I grow my own food, I build my own house and others were seen as nuisance at best, thieves at worst.

Then history reminds us that people used to work together to build better and faster but with always a sense of hierarchy. I build a house for someone, I work for someone. Two people at the top of the social ladder would not work together, they would compete. They would try to create a monopoly. They would try to thrive on economy of scale. 

Then people started to work together without competing but still owning their own tools, their own assets so in a way still competing as the one with the best tools, the newest tools would win.

Today, things are changing. Not only do we work together, but also we share everything. We do not own or if we do, we share and we connect. Technology has improved so much that it allows easy sharing, easy working together (even at a long distance), easy connection, easy moving, easy mobility. We have learned to manage and master technology to make it easy to do everything. Objects are connected to tell us if our house is okay, if the temperature inside is correct, if the plants are thirsty, if the doors are locked, if there are no water leaks. Sharing has become smart and people not sharing are considered old generation. We have a distributed way of doing things, we experiment, adapt, learn and evolve. We create value through idea exchange and open standards.

Today, you do not need to own a car. Either you borrow it from your neighbor, you borrow it from an electrical car provider in the street or your carpool. 

Today you do not need to own a bike. You borrow it from someone or in the street provided by the city.

Today, you do not own a lawn mower, a saw, any tools, you just borrowed them and you optimize the use of all tools because they are used all the time by many people.

Physical assets, skills, networks, devices, data, experience, process… all these can be shared and optimized.

Thanks to this economy you create abundance when past economies created scarcity.

Remember the encyclopedia (with over 50,000 articles) ? Now you have Wikipedia with 32 million articles in 27 languages!

Do you remember the phone, wired and unique? Now we have an incredible choice with Skype, Whatsapp and many very large mobile networks.

When we look back and think of media, we used to have mainstream media. Today we have the blogosphere, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook… We most of the time have too many sources and we are connected 24/7 365.

The models explained above transcends and deeply change the world of business. All these new ways of doing business are bringing us towards sustainability, equitable, full of potential, thriving, and a business of managing and optimizing abundance.

Go online, find your collaborative tool, create your own business and you will find yourself like AirB&B that has no building, no room and no assets, Uber that has no cars. This way of doing business is more effective and it costs much less from the beginning.

The world has changed, follow it or be left behind.