Collaborative economy and massive open online course

One nice side result of taking a coursera MOOC course over the past few weeks on Gamification is that I've learned about the newest global economy - the collaborative economy. Also known as sharing economy, users engage in sharing of goods, services, money, space or transportation via cyberspace. When one user has a car that he/she might not need all of the time, there are sites that he/she can go to rent out or share the use of the vehicle to another person. It could also be more formalized like in the case of a company named Uber, where licensed drivers - limo or cabs - are connected to fares via an app.

There's also a rise to the everyperson vacation rental space through sites like Airbnb. A person is still apparently vetted via the third-party hosting service to ensure the renter is safe and reliable. But if you do want to rent your space, you don't have hospitality or whatever hotel tax and regulations put on you. Pretty cool huh?

According to a cloud-based research organization Vision Critial, if you are between 18-34 years old, you're probably already sharing. Not that other age groups haven't tried it, but you are most likely to have this method as part of your normal repertoire - without suspicion. The Sharing is the New Buying  report written by Vision Critical gives an in-depth look at what is available and paints a great picture of what has been motivating "neo-sharers" to act.

from the Sharing is the New Buying, How to win in the collaborative economy report, 2013.

In our last #gamification14 assignment students need to proposed a gamification of a collaborative economy start-up site named ShareAll. I'm having way too much fun designing a sharing passport, with scroll and badges for sharers and sharees alike to show their global and local impact.