Zipcar Founder on the Benefits of Sharing

Robin Chase , founder of Zipcar and the community carpooling website GoLoco, spoke to GOOD Magazine recently about several ideas that have been really getting us excited recently: the “product as service” model, opensource innovation and multipurpose design. In discussing her thoughts on the power of sharing, Chase refers to the idea of  ”excess capacity,” an object’s potential when not in use. As is the case with most of the physical items that we own, this additional capacity goes untapped, while we continue to assume all of the associated costs. 

With both our economy and environment suffering the effects of dwindling resources (albeit in different ways), Chase believes we need to better utilize what we have left. She explains:

I would say that today, as a planet, we have many more scarce and expensive resources than we ever imagined before. We need to be thinking about how we can maximize the utility and benefit we get out of our individual budgets. And the way to do that is by multipurposing every asset we have, and every investment we make, so that we don’t have to buy seven different devices. We can buy one device.

And while adopting these strategies makes sense on many levels, the benefits remain somewhat abstract. Getting the general public to change their beliefs about ownership and embrace this kind of thinking will require making the inherent value a bit more concrete. Translating these concepts into dollars and cents is certainly one effective method. Chase leaves off with this statistic:

Eighty-six percent of the trips we take in our cars we take alone. Each one of those trips costs about 50 cents a mile, so it starts to add up—to about $8,000 a year.

 Her entire interview can be heard here.

GOOD Magazine: Robin Chase on the (Financial) Value of Sharing