The Mesh - Lisa Gansky [56]
Over time, a service like the Geek Squad encourages retailers to buy products that are durable and can be easily repaired. That sets the stage for a “reverse” supply chain, where the same careful attention to efficiency in supplying goods is applied to their recovery and reuse on the other end. To be reclaimable, the materials would necessarily be nontoxic.
Suppliers, partners, regulators, and even competitors will increasingly be required to design these reverse supply chains. Those industries and countries that are successful will be on the leading, not the tail, end of the twenty-first-century economy. And they can help each other thrive. Patagonia has long been a leader in environmentally sustainable business practices. In the process, it gained considerable knowledge about “greening” its supply chain. Now Patagonia is again showing leadership by sharing that knowledge with Walmart by helping it develop a product-specific sustainability index. And as we’ve seen, there’s considerable evidence that customers appreciate businesses that take environmental concerns seriously, and make purchasing decisions accordingly. The economics of efficiency—of conserving rather than squandering resources—are also compelling. Both factors will drive up a Mesh or partial-Mesh company’s earnings per share.
grab your partner.
Of course, the service model works best in a Mesh-style ecosystem, where information and resources are shared among partners. Mesh leaders, innovators, and provocateurs like Patagonia that share information with ecosystem partners will lead the path to the new economy and stimulate a “Mesh-ripe” culture. Since older businesses tend to feel they “own” their customers, and don’t want to share data, they will find it increasingly difficult to compete with new Mesh businesses that have less resistance to sharing information. Although they may have less data to share in the beginning, Mesh businesses use that data to create more customized offers. Some large businesses, as we’ve seen, will find Mesh partners. Mesh businesses can also seek traditional business partners that help them reach bigger markets or realize economies of scale.
Even on their own, businesses both enormous and boutique can gain with Mesh strategies: create share platforms for goods and materials, devise and use rich data flows to refine your offers, and cultivate social networks to grow respect and reach for your brand. These are tricks even an old dog can learn.
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Seed Your Own Mesh
WHAT’S HERE: make the everyday better; arrive early, stay for the main meal; define, refine, and scale; leverage the “now,” grasshopper; finally, give serendipity a big squeeze.
Don’t worry about people stealing your idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
—Howard Aiken, U.S. computer scientist (1900-1973)
When you start any business, choose something that’s gotten under your skin. It should be something you’re passionate about and willing to obsess about at weird hours. It could be a market that you really love and think needs more attention, or a kind of product or activity that you’re enamored with. It could be something you know could be done better with products or services that are disruptive, edgy, game-changing, or honed to precision. Right now, there are seemingly endless opportunities, leveraging the Web, to create richer, deeper experiences. Web services and platforms,