A new age is knocking at the door...

... The age of access is replacing the age of ownership...

By some estimates as smart factories become the majority it is expected than less of 5% of the adult population will be needed for this kind of work. There is going (if it isn't already) an enormous transition to a world that is less and less dominated by ownership and rather access. In this new world - as you can see if you look around - you will pay for access to experiences, natural sights, cultural knowledge (museums, historical sites, etc). In this new world we are going to own less (think Microsoft 365, your car lease, SAAS, cloud computing, etc) and move rapidly towards a more collaborative economy.

Owning a building or a vehicle will become less relevant unless that building or vehicle is turned into a experience (think offices being turned into co-working spaces or hotels chains being turned into "stay at any of our hotels for a fixed monthly fee instead of renting one apartment in one place for the long term"). It is an exciting world even if a little confusing at present. In this world we will be able to deliver services at a fraction of the price of how we did it previously (look at how India is now able to distribute social grants and bring millions of SMEs into the tax net which previously were operating under the radar screen).

But will we overcommercialise access to experiences? Will this end up being a phenomenal opportunity for the priviledged few that have access to the internet (to keep in mind: half of the world's population still hasn't made a phone call. The majority of the world's population has never set foot on a plane... people on LinkedIn are not really representative of the world out there)?

How is this amazing street entrepreneur in South Africa whose photo I took yesterday going to benefit from this new world?

I don't know the answers. I don't know the future. Even our fast-growing StartUpTribe is an experiment in the context of this fast changing world... an attempt to create a safe place where millions of people will not own anything other than their reputation... where they are not sold but rather invited to collaborate, learn, share experiences and access just in time resources depending on their immediate needs. A plug and play space for people to own their destiny which isn't owned by anyone, least of all us. The StartUp Tribe is an attempt to create a democratic platform where people own themselves and access to their data. This is also why I laugh when people ask me who owns the data (technically it is sitting on our servers but that's just from a practical perspective for now and not from an ownership perspective).

We live in exciting times. I get that some people are scared (I too come from an age that shaped me to struggle to understand the current shift)... but you can embrace change the same way you embrace that you and your partner are growing and that your relationship with them also has to grow.

Change is not always comfortable but once you start the journey you'll wonder why you didn't start sooner.