So that’s probably too sensationalist a title, but I was struck over the last few days by how many times I encountered the same theme in different guises: using the web to do more with less!  Here are just a few of the examples:

• A major article about Zipcar in this weekend’s New York Times magazine titled “Share my Ride”

• Young entrepreneurs coming to visit us and using Airbed and Breakfast to keep down their cost of travel (this is essentially people sharing their appartments)

• The sharing of office space via services such as SuiteMatch – and even folks renting out their conference room by the hour

• I was talking to a friend about sailboats and he mentioned that instead of buying he was thinking of joining a brand new program for fractional ownership (all web-based of course).

The idea is the same on all of these.  A lot of physical assets were historically underutilized because coordination of sharing was difficult.  The web addresses two crucial obstacles to sharing: finding times when assets are available and tracking their use. Not only can you know which cars are available, but also any use (and abuse) can be tracked (almost) automatically.

Of course cloud computing is one of the best examples of this.  Here the process of sharing hardware and tracking its usage can be completely automated.  Because different sites and services spike at different times, the total hardware required with cloud computing will be significantly smaller than if everyone had to keep all the hardware on hand for their respective peak loads.

It is interesting to think about how this principle will extend to human resources.  Take graphic designers for example.  Traditionally, it was difficult to find a designer (you would have to have a lot of people literally lug their portfolio into your office).  The result was that when people found a good designer they would hire them and bring them in-house.  But of course design work comes and goes and the person might be completely underutilized at times.  With the web on the other hand it becomes very easy for many diffferent businesses to share the same freelance designer.  So it’s not surprising that we are seeing a big shift to the use of freelance designers.  The same logic is likely to apply to a lot of other professions.

So that’s probably too sensationalist a title, but I was struck over the last few days by how many times I encountered the same theme in different guises: using the web to do more with less!  Here are just a few of the examples:

• A major article about Zipcar in this weekend’s New York Times magazine titled “Share my Ride”

• Young entrepreneurs coming to visit us and using Airbed and Breakfast to keep down their cost of travel (this is essentially people sharing their appartments)

• The sharing of office space via services such as SuiteMatch – and even folks renting out their conference room by the hour

• I was talking to a friend about sailboats and he mentioned that instead of buying he was thinking of joining a brand new program for fractional ownership (all web-based of course).

The idea is the same on all of these.  A lot of physical assets were historically underutilized because coordination of sharing was difficult.  The web addresses two crucial obstacles to sharing: finding times when assets are available and tracking their use. Not only can you know which cars are available, but also any use (and abuse) can be tracked (almost) automatically.

Of course cloud computing is one of the best examples of this.  Here the process of sharing hardware and tracking its usage can be completely automated.  Because different sites and services spike at different times, the total hardware required with cloud computing will be significantly smaller than if everyone had to keep all the hardware on hand for their respective peak loads.

It is interesting to think about how this principle will extend to human resources.  Take graphic designers for example.  Traditionally, it was difficult to find a designer (you would have to have a lot of people literally lug their portfolio into your office).  The result was that when people found a good designer they would hire them and bring them in-house.  But of course design work comes and goes and the person might be completely underutilized at times.  With the web on the other hand it becomes very easy for many diffferent businesses to share the same freelance designer.  So it’s not surprising that we are seeing a big shift to the use of freelance designers.  The same logic is likely to apply to a lot of other professions.