The Mesh - Lisa Gansky [12]
Finally, world population growth has sped up the trend toward greater urban density, which favors Mesh businesses. A car- or bike- or tool-sharing business can offer a greater depth and variety of products and services in neighborhoods where there are more people nearby to take advantage of them.
As an entrepreneur, I’m excited to have a new platform to rein-vent markets and create thriving, customer-loving businesses. But I’m also thankful for new approaches that are good for the planet and its inhabitants. The Mesh yields what is sometimes called the “double bottom line”—greener commerce and greater profits (or triple if you add in the social benefits). The ethic of doing well while doing good has already created wildly successful companies such as Patagonia, Triodos Bank, The Body Shop, and Virgin Group. Elite business schools at UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Babson, Columbia, Oxford in the United Kingdom, INSEAD in France, McGill in Canada, IE in Spain, EGADE in Mexico, and other top universities devote curriculum to social entrepreneur-ship and sustainable business. Tomorrow’s business leaders recognize that using resources efficiently increasingly drives profit, and that trust in a business’s environmental and social practices increasingly drives informed consumers’ decisions.
growing the mesh ecosystem.
From the business-to-business side, I also appreciate the rich partnership opportunities. I look at Mesh businesses as a kind of ecosystem. They can be organized around classes of things that people want to do, like transportation and travel. They can be organized around a profile centered on a demographic (age, gender, region, and so on) or psychographic (extreme sporter, foodie, cultural creative, and so forth). Partnership businesses will join the ecosystem and provide a domain of products or services to like-minded audiences. The voice, package, and price point must make sense for that market. Interesting services can be exclusively targeted with limited-time offers. For example, I recently noticed that Taxi Magic (a national taxi dispatch service with a mobile app) had teamed up with Heineken to promote safe journeys home. The partnership is a natural fit. It’s “on brand” for both parties and will expand to other types of transit and activities over time.
New businesses have formed for that purpose, including Groupon, foursquare, Gowalla, Feest, and MePlease. As one example, Groupon leverages a traveler’s buying power by enabling groups of people to get discounts on selected services and products. Let’s say they are offering a huge discount for a bus charter to Yosemite, but you must collect ten people to take the deal. Mobile devices facilitate passing the offer along to friends and acquaintances to quickly assemble your group. Groupon offers you a place to find the forty other people you need for the per-ticket price to make sense for everyone. Groupon is similar to a buying club, but one that uses the Web and mobile devices to enable merchants to create time-specific offers for impromptu groups. Started in Chicago in late 2008, Groupon spread to thirty cities, quickly became profitable, and recently received $135 million in new funding.
It’s easy and fun to imagine potential partnerships. A car-sharing service, for example, might craft a deal with Whole Foods, Blue Shield, and SmartyPig. Here’s a scenario: If you spend over $100 a week with Whole Foods, you’re entitled to a free car for a half day a week. Blue Shield, recognizing that Whole Foods’ customers are health-conscious, offers you an annual physical. If you hit a target heart rate and cholesterol level, Blue Shield (whose financial