The Notion of Sharing

We’re supposed to have a call with a company later this week that wants to bring an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enhanced solution into China. I can remember pitching ideas, looking for clients about five years ago in the Valley.  At that time, "big-data" was de rigueur.  Every damn conversation one ventured into, someone needed to drop that phrase into the conversation somewhere.  Yesterday's news now, like a D-Ram commodity,  AI, is the acronym of the moment upon which it all hinges.

This particular company wants to introduce its products to shared-economy companies here in town.  The confluence then of two hype-curves, we certainly have more than a few shared economy success stories to point to here in Beijing.    

My chum shared with me a very interesting Bloomberg article, examining the concept of shared economy in China.  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-12-02/why-china-s-millennials-are-happy-to-own-nothing   The main premise is that in accordance with the legacy of collectivization, Chinese people are oddly well attuned to the notion of sharing property rather than having to own it.  Counterintuitive when one considers the waxing acquisitiveness during the span of time I’ve spent here.  In two and a half decades, people have and will continue to covet personal property:  things which they were previously forbidden to own.  But the Nielsen stat they share,  is quite revealing:  Apparently 43% of Americans are open to sharing goods, whereas more than 95% of Chinese answered favorably.   

One of the most remarkable manifestations of this is surely the shared bike ride phenomenon, which illustrates the tremendous speed with which China is iterating .  When I first arrived, everyone had a bike.  When it became possible to own one’s own car, anyone who could secured one.   About five years ago that became most of the city.  But bikes, shared bikes in particular, have suddenly become cool and are ubiquitous, once again.  They are infinitely more practical within town and what with traffic and parking generally a nightmare, bikes that you can use-and-lose have sprung up virally across every major city in China.   The U.S. fell in love with the car as well, but the love affair has lasted nearly a century. How remarkable if this nation were able to leapfrog beyond automobiles quicker than the U.S. after summing up the limits of the infatuation quickly, efficiently.  

Wednesday, 10/24/17