The Mesh - Lisa Gansky [43]
Classes of services, like transportation and travel, are opportune for organizing Mesh ecosystems. (A personal favorite: to prevent drunk driving, Heineken has partnered with taxi companies in major cities to create Taxi Magic, a free online booking service.) Homeexhange.com might pair with RelayRides, Spride Share, or WhipCar to offer their customers a deal on a local car service. Roomorama, as I noted earlier, makes lodging arrangements with film festivals and conferences. Perhaps they could add a bike-sharing partner, or use consumer data to figure out what nearby restaurants or events might appeal to the filmgoers.
Of course, bike sharing alone is a fine thing. But the richer opportunity is to collect similar brands or interesting coconspirators to create an ecosystem of services—everything from other kinds of sports equipment, to a tool share with bike wrenches, to a hostel association—for selected customers. The businesses within the network achieve greater value by thoughtfully integrating with other services. Over time, the partners will have more and more data to create ever more personalized offers. Partners are attracted to Mesh ecosystems to provide products and services to like-minded audiences, where the voice, tone, package, and price point all appeal to that market.
Integrating information from your own and other systems allows companies to offer better service to a particular flavor of customer. Since the Mesh is interactive with all parties—the company, the community that it’s servicing, and the partners—the information is fresh (and in some cases, its value is perishable). These businesses have the fuel to create new incentives or expectations, continually shaping their offers, and therefore their brands. That’s when access truly trumps ownership.
Mesh businesses can also expand their horizons by playing with unexpected partners. Most people think of AARP as simply an organization that supports older people. But AARP is also effectively a marketing organization targeted to an interesting and important community. For a Mesh business such as home sharing or mentoring and education, partnering with AARP could be a ticket to reach millions. Every offer isn’t going to reach millions of people right away, or perhaps ever. Still, Mesh businesses can be imaginative in creating offers that make sense for shoppers who now gravitate to big-box retailers.
Mesh businesses are in the very early stages of developing ecosystems to serve markets. One of the entrepreneurial thrill rides of the next decade will be watching and helping these businesses develop mature ecosystems for partnering, sharing information and materials, and serving customers.
find a niche and go stand there before someone else does.
The ecosystem metaphor contains several elements useful to Mesh businesses. Nature operates in integrated systems. The true value lies in how all the elements of an ecosystem work together to sustain life over time—measured in millennia, not fiscal quarters. Here are some of the ways a Mesh ecosystem mimics a natural one:
1. Nature is not only integrated, it abhors a vacuum. Niches are quickly identified and filled, a crucial competitive strategy for Mesh businesses.
2. Nature is resilient and adaptive. Seasonal changes and catastrophic events may disrupt the pattern, but new life emerges. Existing businesses also become more resilient and sustainable in a Mesh ecosystem.
3. In nature, “waste” is food. Waste from one system becomes food for another—it’s never wasted. Vegetation and animals decompose to make fresh soil. Forests absorb carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen; we do the reverse. These processes are efficient. A Mesh ecosystem likewise evolves to simultaneously and efficiently utilize and replenish available resources.
spot-weld that niche.
Since their information infrastructure is better able to identify customer needs and desires,