Why Collaborative Communities are the Future

“Over the past year, we have seen the sharing economy moving squarely into mainstream. For example, when Airbnb first tried to raise capital with the idea for people sharing their homes with strangers, they were laughed out the boardrooms.”
Will Davies, CEO Car Next Door

Over recent years there has been a wave of rethinking the way we work. Top management of large companies are looking at ways in which to remain competitive and maintain high performance in their fields. In the current climate it is indeed clear to them that overall success is about being agile and flexible. A simple concept, you would say, after all you would not send out a top heavy athlete to win an Olympic race. However, over the past 20 years companies have put a great importance on their size and international presence. As they say “big is beautiful” The result of this has often been a top heavy management unable to achieve efficient and fast decision making and challenged by their own sheer size. Many argue that this is this has gradually created a lazy, demotivated work force which is not responsive to change nor the need for rapid turn arounds in the decision making process.

2008 is a significant date in the business world as it is the birth of collaborative business communities. The first companies, such as Airbnb and Uber, were certainly scoffed at in their beginnings but their concept came as a solution to the top heavy business model common at the time. Their concept had a positive effect on productivity: motivated staff, good customer service and high standard products at competitive prices.

Ten years later the collaborative community is now in full swing and it has provoked radical change. The statistics show that this change has been welcomed by the general public. Recently a survey showed that 72% of Americans have used some type of shared or on-demand online service with 15% of this percentage having used ride hailing apps such as Uber. So, these initial “game changers” have indeed been catalysts to promote an improved and more effective workforce disrupting business as we know it today.

However some of you may have one burning question. Why are such communities so effective? According to Paul Alder, writing in the Harvard Business Review, collaborative communities encourage people to continually apply their own unique talent to the group. There is a pride re-installed in such people as their own individual work is valued and is accountable. The worker is taken out of the context as being a mere number lost amongst others but becomes an integral part of achieving a mission: an important cog in the wheel. Alder says : “By marrying the sense of common purpose to a supportive structure these organisations are mobilizing knowledge, workers talents and expertise… the approach fosters not only innovation but also efficiency and scalability”.

It is indeed all positive and with more and more large names joining the game the tide is not set to change in the near future. Projections by PWC show that the sharing sector’s global revenues have the potential to increase to around $335 billion by 2025 — it’s an economy showing no signs of slowing down.

New ideas always inspire new ideas and this is where Productivist concept comes in. Freelabster, the team behind Productivist, was certainly inspired by the changes started in 2008. Its network of 3000 plus printing experts pride themselves for what they do and the work they produce. They are 100% accountable for their work and therefore they know that they cannot afford to produce work which is not of a high standard. You could definitely say that Freelabster’s community is a highly motivated and connected network which shares its expertise and is able to work to short deadlines. This has enabled Freelabster to keep a lean, agile team. Big is not the answer to become beautiful!

For Freelabster, the gradual development of blockchain technology, has been only an inspiration to take this great business model one step further. Indeed Productivist is the logical but next innovative step. Already working with large companies in the supply of 3D printing and modelling services, they could see that large companies struggled to maintain efficient supply chains and indeed battled against the fact that their own internal teams lacked the right skillset. Being able to experience with manufacturers their challenges, Productivist is one which is well thought out and based on the experiences they have experienced in Freelabster.

Productivist is genius and one of the most attractive things about this project is that the groundwork is already partly in place. It is not a project starting from scratch. It is backed by expertise developed over time.

There is definitely one thing which cannot be argued and that is that there are two major disruptive factors in business today and they plan to stay ; collaborative communities and of course blockchain technology. The two are a perfect fit; it just took a little imagination to put them together.

Going back to companies such as Airbnb and Uber, these companies were innovators just as Productivist hopes to be. Airbnb has been extremely profitable. Indeed many of those potential investors who scorned Airbnb in its beginnings must be kicking themselves now when looking at the 2017 results. Airbnb made a profit of $93 million. In short, the genius of such innovative projects lies in their infallible insight into the industry they wish to be part of. Sometimes hard to get off the ground and often missed business opportunities for hesitant investors such projects,are born to be winners and are just waiting to be given the chance to spread their wings.

Amongst the many ICOs, Productivist is waiting for just that moment. Innovative, well researched and providing a real answer to industry needs, this is a project not to missed. Waiting to spread its wings, it is a project with vision which certainly will transform the manufacturing industry’s supply chain management. With unbounding potential, investing in this project can be only positive and for those who do, they will be able to proudly say they have played a key part of the manufacturing revolution 4.0.