Langues appliquées - Anglais : Economie, gestion, droit, AES - 4e - 132

manaGement

Instructions For Study
1. Turn to the definitions following the text Collaborative Consumption. They refer to the
specialist terms printed in bold type in the list of Useful words and concepts.
2. Use an English language dictionary to find the meanings (in context) of the other words in
the list.
3. Do the exercises to improve your language skills.

Collaborative Consumption
Over the past couple of years a quiet yet powerful revolution of collaboration has risen up and is
gaining momentum throughout our cultural, political and economic system. We are relearning how
to create value out of shared and open resources in ways that balance personal self-interest with the
good of the larger community. People can participate without losing their autonomy or individual
identity. As Neil Gorenflo, founder of the online community Shareable, puts it, "Communities can
help people become more than they are as individuals. In other words, we benefit from a 'collaborative
individualism'."
As a matter of fact, people are participating in different types of collaborative consumption from a
diverse array of subcultures and socioeconomic and demographic groups. There are two distinct ways
to participate in collaborative consumption, each with a different appeal to different people. You can
play the role of 'peer provider' by providing assets to rent, share or borrow. Or you can play the role of
'peer user' consuming the available products and services. Some participants may choose to do both,
but others may feel comfortable on one end of the spectrum. The participant who wants to make money
renting his or her car through WhipCar or other unused items through sites such as Ecomodo is likely
to have different motivations from the 'user' who rents these items. Similarly, the person looking for
a high rate of return through a loan on social lending sites such as Zopa is there for different reasons
than the peer borrower who needs money.
Some collaborative consumers are forward thinking and socially minded optimists, but others
are individuals motivated by a practical urgency to find a new and better way of doing things. That
practical urgency may be to save money or time, access a better service, be more sustainable, or allow
closer relationships with people rather than brands.
Swap trading, time banks, local exchange trading systems (LETS), bartering, social lending, peerto-peer currencies, tool exchanges, land share, clothing swaps, toy sharing, shared workspaces, cohousing, co-working, couchsurfing, car sharing, crowdfunding, bike sharing, ride sharing, food co-ops,
walking school buses, shared microcrèches, peer-to-peer rental - the list goes on - are all examples
of collaborative consumption. Although these examples vary in scale, maturity and purpose, they can
be organized into three systems - product service systems, redistribution markets and collaborative
lifestyles.
Product Service Systems (PSS)
An increasing number of people from different backgrounds and across all ages are shifting to a
'usage mind-set' whereby they pay for the benefit of a product - what it does for them - without needing
to own the product outright. This is the basis of product service systems (PSS), which are disrupting
traditional industries based on models of individual private ownership. In a PSS, a service enables
multiple products owned by a company to be shared (car sharing, solar power, launderettes), or products
that are privately owned to be shared or rented peer-to-peer (Zilok, TheHireHub). PSSs can also extend

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