Scenarios for a collaborative economy

One of the personas based on our research that we created – Lifestyle Hackers “see their own assets as the best form of support. Although many of these are unemployed or underworked, they make use of their networks to share assets and skills, often not bothering with formal support.”

If this group of young people doesn’t bother with formal support, will it not self exclude itself and by becoming silent about how institutions can provide social welfare, will its needs not become silenced as a result on other issues?

Lifestyle hackers develop their own projects, which are often pioneering in meeting needs not understood let alone met by the state, what we could call social innovations…or even social enterprise?

Isn’t there a risk that those with the greatest power, be it industries, sectors or organisations, will co-opt the new business models being developed. We’re already seeing this, where firms are co-opting crowd sourced ideas or rebranding tax obligations into support for social enterprises.

As @mbauwens argues, we as citizens are creating 100% of Facebook’s “use value” and they are extracting 100% of the “exchange value” from us:

Will people developing innovative business models collaboratively, transparently and most importantly unpaid become disillusioned with institutional initiatives to engage and involve them, and will either accept nondisclosure agreements to survive? Or will they look to develop their business models through looking at each resources of their networks?