While entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and journalists fall over themselves trying to create or discover the next great example of the “sharing economy,” a bigger opportunity may be hiding in plain sight. Companies like Etsy, airbnb, and Uber have forever changed our notions of supply and demand, but the questions that plague Uber in its battle towards market dominance suggest that there is another, more important driver that can accelerate or impede growth: respect.
Uber and many of its cohorts in the sharing economy were built around respect for the consumer. In Uber’s case, the driver on demand company recognized that consumers could do better than rely on a limited number of licensed taxis and street corner hailing to get around town (I might not have fully empathized with this need had I not moved from the relatively efficient NYC taxi market to Boston which still seems plagued by a small, expensive supply of taxis whose drivers still seem to be debating the purpose of their taxi roof lights). The genius of Uber (and others like Lyft) was based on respect for people and their needs – and the recognition that existing systems were not built on similar respect.
Now, when people predict the downfall of this $40B company, their reasons are tied up in the notion that Uber has drifted away from its foundation of respect. Pick your scandal: safety concerns, booking fake Lyft rides to clog their competition’s schedule, concerns about surge pricing, a poorly managed response to an exec threatening to track journalists… the question keeps coming up: Can a company built on a foundation of respect for people continue to succeed when it starts acting disrespectfully?
The rise and predicted fall of Uber (though I’m dubious that the latter will actually happen to the extent that some propose), suggests that the bigger force of change in today’s economy is this idea of respect – that it’s human-centered design that is really driving things today and phenomena like the sharing economy are only outgrowths of a larger respect economy. The manifestations of respect may be a sharing model, it may be simpler, more seamless design, more democratized information, access, or autonomy – or it may be something else. But what it is, and where our opportunities for innovation lie, is based on respect.
How can you compete in the respect economy? In many ways it’s as simple as simply delivering on the promise of the steps we take as business creators, product developers or marketers. It starts with a deep understanding of your customers, who they are, what they need and desire, and how those things change over time. But a key shift in the respect economy is a change in mindset from assessing opportunities to seeking to understand – the opportunities will come with time, but if they get in way of that initial understanding, you are already setting yourself back in the respect economy. Don’t start thinking about what you want someone to do until you are confident in the knowledge of what they themselves want to do.
It’s not rocket science and importantly, it’s not a me-too model either – it’s just following through on the things you know you probably should do, but often fail to do because of perceived limitations on time or budget. In the respect economy, the old adage “the customer always comes first” takes on new meaning – and those who fail to understand that, will be doomed to fail.
