ABSTRACT
In the economy-in-Planet, many more objects must be available on a shared basis than in the legacy economy. In Chapter 5 we examined business activities at the use and retrieval life stages of sufficient, user-owned items; in this chapter we turn to these same stages for user-accessed objects. Companies engaged in these activities are product-access companies; and the boom in user-accessed items presents a considerable opportunity for them. Three types of companies that already exist in the legacy economy provide a blueprint for product access on the economy-in-Planet: rental companies, service providers, and “platform companies” of the so-called “peer-to-peer” economy. The customers of these companies either derive benefits from objects by using them themselves; or, in the instance of services, benefits are derived when objects are used as tools on the customer’s behalf. Consider, as alternatives to owning a lawnmower, either renting one from a rental company or a “peer”, or using gardening services: in the first instance, you rent a lawnmower and mow the lawn yourself; in the second, someone does it for you. Either way, you end up with a freshly mown lawn without owning a lawnmower—creating a mower-shaped resource saving.
