Stone Soup &The Sharing Economy
Selfish businesses are destined for failure. That might sound nationalist or even communist because it’s unpopular to attack selfishness in business. The last thing I want to do is impede innovation and reduce entrepreneurs to nihilism, halting progress. We need to do a better job of what Eric Miller describes as “weighing the impact of our actions on others.” What I am advocating for is collaboration.
Collaboration is paramount today because specialization has become the norm. More and more companies provide a niche offering, only providing solutions to one problem.
“There’s more and more to know in the world, and you can only have so much in your head, so the share of stuff you know as an individual is declining in any field.” — Benjamin F. Jones
You can only know so much, meaning you can only do so much, so ask yourself, how is this mentality improving innovation? Jones points to the Wright Brothers as an example in his research. The Wright Brothers, in 1903, were just two men passionate about aviation who set out to design and build the first airplane. In their success, they literally invented flight for humans, which shows the importance of innovation. It also demonstrates that once an idea is no longer a secret, it takes collaboration to build something even greater.
Today, Boeing has dozens of specialists working on their 787 engines alone. The airline industry is now at the point where they can no longer rely solely on the knowledge of only two people, but a collaboration between engineers, psychologists, technologists, and government regulations to produce airplanes that fly safer, more efficiently, and at greater distances.
It is the Wright Brothers airplane versus Boeing today. Creativity is no different and usually the best creative work relies on collaboration. The creative process is transcendent. It is one of the few human experiences that lets us glimpse into something greater than ourselves, especially when the stakes are greater than our own individual wants and desires. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, uses the analogy of The Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA to illustrate this point. ARPA was created in response to Sputnik, and not surprisingly, one key component to ARPA was its reliance on collaboration and creativity. This collaboration led to ARPANET, the beginning phases of the internet as we know it today. Creativity and collaboration are most powerful when playing on the strengths of other creators, collaborating from multiple points of view.
The sharing economy was created as a socio-economic system built for sharing resources and collaboration. It provides greater value for all by letting the users and customers participate. Traditional business models are reliant on their specialized employees to create and provide value for their customers. The Sharing Economy includes companies like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and Facebook who don’t create value for themselves, but rather let their users create and add value. Today, we increasingly specialize our skills, meaning that work groups will grow in size with more specialists in order to become successful. This is the nature of specialization, in order for people to specialize in a specific area, it requires others with different skill sets to fill in the gaps, also known as collaboration.
“Over time, this is an ongoing, never-ending phenomenon of increased specialization, which is ever increasing the demand for collaboration.” — Benjamin Jones.
Stone Soup
The story of stone soup originates in European folklore, as two war-torn and hungry soldiers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys. The villagers themselves starving from war, refuse to share with the two strangers. The soldiers then pull out a pot and start boiling water with a stone inside. This invokes the curiosity of the villagers and one by one they leave their houses to approach the soldiers. Inquisitive, they ask the soldiers; “what is that you are making?” The soldiers tell them it’s stone soup and kindly persuade each villager to share just one ingredient to the stone in the pot. The story of stone soup is a moral regarding the value of sharing. Now more than ever, we need stone soup. Share your car, stone soup. Share your house, stone soup. Share your network, you get the point.
History is riddled with examples of stone soup. General George S. Patton was an American World War II icon and innovative leader, but much to the dismay of his superiors, General Patton often relied on “rock soup” as he called it, for reinforcements when planning offensive operations. General Patton would send troops on “reconnaissance” missions to provoke his enemy. Once provoked, Patton could then persuade his superiors to provide reinforcements to engage where before provocation, Patton’s superiors were reticent to send more troops. These small scale probes led to full scale attacks in the name of “self defense” expediting the American advancement across Northern Africa. The Stone Soup story revolves around two clever soldiers with a charismatic personality who can get people to help them when their first instinct is not to. The value in sharing equals greater outcomes for all. Where one adds a carrot to the soup, another celery, and another adds potatoes, we all enjoy more, together.
What is not mentioned here is the business to business Sharing Economy. As a business, you might specialize in connectivity in the form of internet services — that’s your carrot. Another business specializes in digital video streaming — their potatoes. Alone, you will enjoy nothing but carrots or potatoes. In the Sharing Economy, you get to enjoy a heartier soup and an enriched experience for your customers.
Data Co-Op
One of the most important components of any company is its data. Rarely does any organization share its secret ingredient. Most would say, of course you don’t want to share what makes you different from your competitors. I say that’s selfish, acting initially like the villagers who wouldn’t share, not only damning your progress, but needlessly suffering in your own lack of resources.
At the core of the Sharing Economy, particularly for business to business, lies the idea of a data co-op, managing data and data fulfillment to everyone who sees the need to participate. Share your data with the co-op, get back more value and better insights into your industry, competitors, and customers. Collaboration is a buzzword in business for good reason, but joining forces with those who share different perspectives, skill sets, and areas of expertise will result in more creative ideas and better outcomes. We see the benefit at the peer to peer and direct to consumer experience with Uber, Airbnb, and popular social platforms, can it be done at the enterprise level, business to business?
It’s like Benjamin F. Jones says: “In everything, teams beat solo, in the 1950s and 60s, in lots of fields, solo beat teams. It’s flipped. Now teams always have a higher home-run probability than solo.” The same exists at the corporate level and business to business — your soup awaits.
My name is Matt Wunderli, I am the founder and CEO of Publisher Arts. We lie at the core of the Sharing Economy. We’re a data co-op, managing data and data fulfillment to everyone who sees the need to participate — our stone soup. Let’s get in touch. Let me know what you think and what I may have missed. Let’s improve together.
