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The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing
 
 

The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing [Kindle Edition]

Lisa Gansky
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)

Print List Price: $15.00
Kindle Price: $9.99 includes free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
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Sold by: Penguin Publishing
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Lisa Gansky sees around corners and describes a future that seems impossible...until you realize that it's imminent. The Mesh is a very big idea."
-Seth Godin

"Lisa Gansky makes a compelling case for the new competitive logic of sharing- and shows how to build not just a single company, but an entire business ecosystem, around this concept. If you want to understand the future, and maybe even help create it, read this book."
-Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

"This is a brilliant, important book. Lisa Gansky has put her finger on one of the most important trends that will shape our culture over the next decades. She puts social media in a broader economic, cultural, and environmental context."
-Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media

"This book offers a timely introduction to the reality and importance of Mesh companies-ones that provide products and services through sharing, via community participation and a culture of trust-in a way that really matters."
-Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist

"Easy access to shared and personalized goods and services is going to be an integral and ubiquitous part of the new economy. Lisa has tapped into, explains, and explores this new phenomenon."
-Robin Chase, cofounder and founding CEO, Zipcar

"The Mesh clearly reveals the dramatic shift enabled by our connected world. And Gansky's practical experience makes it real. It's essential reading for anyone in business."
-John Donahoe, CEO, eBay

"Gansky's book is an important read for anyone who cares about the planet or is looking to make a ton of money."
-David Hornik, venture capitalist, August Capital

Product Description

"Lisa Gansky is the ideal tour guide and provocateur for this big idea."
-Seth Godin, author of Linchpin and Poke the Box


Traditional businesses follow a simple formula: create a product or service, sell it, collect money. But in the last few years a fundamentally different model has taken root-one in which consumers have more choices, more tools, more information, and more peer-to-peer power. Pioneering entrepreneur Lisa Gansky calls it the Mesh and reveals why it will dominate the future of business.

Mesh companies use social media, wireless networks, and data crunched from every available source to provide people with goods and services at the exact moment they need them, without the burden and expense of owning them outright. Gansky reveals how there is real money to be made and trusted brands and strong communities to be built in helping your customers buy less but use more.



Product Details

  • File Size: 555 KB
  • Print Length: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Portfolio (September 23, 2010)
  • Sold by: Penguin Publishing
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B0043RSIZU
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,983 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The key idea in this book is that we are changing from owning piles of products (and services) to sharing them and using them only when needed. Out here in San Francisco, where many folks use public transportation for commuting and shopping, few need to own a car. So, there's ZipCar, where you can "own" a car for a few days a month, on a "as needed basis". The author also uses Netflix as an example- but of course we have been renting videos and DVD's for quite some time before that company- there's rarely a need to keep an extensive and expensive video library at home.

As the author says "The Mesh difference is that with GPS-enabled mobile web devices and social networks, physical goods are now easily located in space and time. It has become very convenient to find a ride back from your meeting with someone heading to your neighborhood, or get a great deal for drinks close by, or locate an available home in a home exchange while traveling, or discover a new "popup gallery" near the dinner you're attending."

Other examples of course include the classic "timeshare"- condos. In fact I just stayed at one during a rather nice trip to Disneyworld. It was lovely and worked perfectly for us.

Gansky argues against the modern American "throwaway culture" and shows us that "The Mesh" will bring in more products that are "Durable, flexible, reparable and sustainable." " "When stuff became cheap, and then credit became cheap, we filled our lives with stuff - not the things we really care about. "

This is a fascinating concept and very cutting edge. What I found interesting is that it really sounds so obvious once the author points it out, and I agree we are headed that way more and more.

The book also contains more than 50 pages of "Mesh" businesses and references, and even more at the book's/author webpage.

This is Lisa's first book, she was the founder of several internet companies and is a well known entrepreneur.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
I should feel bad saying negative things about this book considering I got it for free from a Seth Godin pre-order, but...

Gansky obviously knows a thing or two about starting businesses. No question. She has done it before and she'll do it again no doubt. The thing is, her big idea doesn't go quite as far as she wants it to, or as she wants you to think it will. The big idea: if you can find a way to monetize having people share, you'll be able to open new business opportunities. She's got some insights: the idea of a baby clothes exchange definitely shows that sharing-based models aren't just limited to big-ticket items. But she overextends by suggesting that any type of business will be able to work this way. I would imagine that if you live in rural North Dakota on a farm, you can't exactly share your harvester in a Zipcar kind of network. You need it at exactly the same time as your neighbors. And I don't care how many shirt-sharing services you can think of, there's just no way I'm sharing shoes or underwear, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I am always more impressed when a book acknowledges the limits of its hypotheses. If you read this book, there's no reason everything can't work with sharing. If you think about the world, you know that can't be true.

There's also something so very "farmer's market" about starting a web-based business based upon sharing. There's nothing new about sharing. Rural communities have done it for years. I made the harvester/Zipcar example for a reason: rural communities have *always* shared big-ticket items and purchses. They've just never made it a business. Barn raising, crop harvesting, etc. aren't at all new and noteworthy and Gansky doesn't talk about them. Why not? My theory: because they don't send the right semiotic. There's nothing hip about them, because urban hipsters don't raise barns or harvest crops. Extended families have shared clothing for hundreds of years but there's two differences between that and what Gansky praises: (1) these people all know each other so there's no need for the Internet to help put them together, and (2) no one charges anyone any money, so there's nothing new-economy about it.

I'll also acknowledge that I may be wrong. For example, Best Buy has just started (as of this review date: February 2011) a program where you can agree that when you buy your electronics, you can bring them back when you're done and get trade-in. But I see this as more of a vendor lock-in, less of a true sharing service (they haven't started a service to allow you to buy the used products when they come back, for example). If they go that extra mile, that starts to parallel the hope Gansky has here about Walmart starting a sharing-based business. Time will tell.

But at the end of the day, I look at this book as being an interesting but flawed hypothesis. More limited in scope, it would have stood up to investigation. But because it overreaches, it falls.
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49 of 58 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In this painstakingly researched fun to read book (how often do those two go together) Gansky has outlined a trend that's been around but often overlooked. The internet has turbocharged our ability to share. It's created a platform for business models based on community use of expensive objects and services.

It'll take an hour to get her point, and then you'll see it over and over, everywhere you look.

Wow.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Fascinating Look at the Web Has Spawned a New Breed of Business
This book is really a case study about how Social Media has helped to spawn a whole new category of businesses, ie. Mesh businesses. Read more
Published 8 months ago by David Starkweather
Stating the obvious
The book really offers not basis for starting your own mesh other than find something that is shared and repeat it on a mass scale. Read more
Published 10 months ago by OnlyNonFiction
Sharing is a nice concept but not the main driver for the future
I found the book to be highly repetitive. It was too long by a couple of chapters at least.
The author uses Zipcar as an example of the Mesh and she fawns over their business... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Bryan Socransky
A Great Read
Lisa Gamsky gives us a glimpse in the future of the world as it should be. It's not clear to be how quickly we will get to a re-usable sharing world of products, but its a what we... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Edward C. Callahan Jr.
Great Read For Business
This book was an eye-opener to the movement of business leveraging sharing as a commodity. Much of the book discusses the different ways business have been utilizing this concept... Read more
Published 11 months ago by keenanburkepitts
A Look at How Sharing Defines The Success of Businesses in the Future
The book discusses the increasingly recurring themes of openness and platform that have been discussed in other books like Open Leadership by Charlene Li and Where Good Ideas Come... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Ismail Elshareef
The Sharing and Caring Business Model - Building and Repurposing...
The heart of the businesses who understand the "Mesh" concept is the ability to provide access to sharing goods and services with an experience superior to owing them. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Suresh C. Sood
Excellent Information and Case Studies
The book provides excellent case study examples on businesses with a product can leverage the Internet and create wealth -- win win scenarios that seem common sense, but are often... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Jo-Anne
The Mesh Can Help You Create A New Market
Kevin Kauzlaric says:

The Mesh business model is one you can use to create a market that was previously unthinkable. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Kevin Kauzlaric
Interesting insights, too much climate change
Gansky has brought interesting insights into current mesh businesses, the convergence of the drivers behind them, and possible opportunities to create new mesh businesses or to... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Jeffrey D. Houghton
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More About the Author

Lisa is an author of The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, to be published by Penguin Press, Fall 2010. Since 1991, Lisa has been an entrepreneur and environmentalist focused on building companies and supporting social ventures where there is an opportunity for well timed disruption and a resounding impact. A founder and CEO of several internet companies, including GNN (the first web portal sold to AOL) and the largest consumer photo sharing and print service, Ofoto (sold to Eastman Kodak in 2001), Lisa's attention is on sustainable ventures with positive social impact. She puts a strong emphasis on clean energy, social networks, accelerating community engagement and awareness & exploring new platforms & business models.

As CEO, co-founder and chairman of Ofoto and President of Digital Services for Eastman Kodak, Lisa drew on her entrepreneurial spirit and experience developing global web and mobile services. Lisa & the team worked to develop Ofoto (now Kodak Gallery) into a world-class consumer services offering for over 50 million customers.

Lisa currently serves as a Director and Co-Founder of Dos Margaritas, an environmental foundation with programs focused in Latin America. She is an advisor & investor in several social ventures including: New Resource Bank, Convio, Squidoo, TasteBook, MePlease & Greener World Media.

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Popular Highlights

 (What's this?)
&quote;
Mesh businesses share four characteristics: sharing, advanced use of Web and mobile information networks, a focus on physical goods and materials, and engagement with customers through social networks. &quote;
Highlighted by 89 Kindle users
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A recent study by McKinsey concluded that a recommendation from a trusted source like a friend or family member was fifty times more likely to persuade someone to buy a product or try a new brand. &quote;
Highlighted by 85 Kindle users
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Look around you for physical resources that could be more efficiently and profitably shared using information networks. &quote;
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