What is the fundamental problem that you are addressing?
Although sharing models are often more sustainable and cost-effective, they often fail due to practical hurdles such as handover: This is often coordinative and time-consuming or inappropriate. It is also shown that the short-term, spontaneous availability of certain objects is a critical condition for certain user groups.
Various studies show the great potential of sharing in urban centers, but also suggest that a lack of sharing infrastructure and logistics solutions make the practice impractical for many users.
These hurdles can only be overcome with difficulty by individual actors because they would have to change complex systems of economic, political and local government actors to do so.
We assume that if certain objects (e.g. expensive special tools, IT equipment or medical equipment) are made available faster and/or with less effort thanks to the integration and combination of existing players, business models and urban logistics infrastructure, the practice of sharing would be economically attractive for many new private and professional users.
Which habits would you like to change or mainstream through which approach?
These two conditions can be met by integrating and making use of existing or new local players and urban logistics infrastructures. These include, for example, agile courier services, such as those currently used for food delivery. But municipal actors in public (local) transport, such as public transport personnel or the infrastructure at bus stops or post offices, can also make these conditions possible.
What do you want to work on during the booster?
We are looking for new use cases under the hypothetical conditions outlined above and use them to develop new, exemplary business models for the sharing economy.
In order to find potential applications that make both economic and ecological sense, as a first step, we systematically search for objects that meet the following criteria: high ecological footprint in manufacturing; high acquisition costs; short-term, spontaneous availability is of high value to users; and the logistical effort of personal delivery is neither economically reasonable nor practicable for users or providers. To do this, we use AI systems to systematically “screen” catalogs of objects and industry directories for suitable objects and industries.
After we have identified a large number of such objects and the provider and user actors involved, we will develop exemplary business models that can function thanks to the use and integration of local actors and urban logistics infrastructures. In doing so, we will also hypothetically further develop and present the roles of these actors and the required functionalities of these infrastructures. This can therefore create new professional roles or identify and outline missing functional elements of the infrastructure. (e.g. tram stops as sharing hubs?)
The developed solutions are critically discussed and plausible in various iterations with experts and practitioners from the affected industries.
Central questions are therefore:
- For which objects does a quick, professional and uncomplicated handover make sense? Which user groups are prepared to pay which service costs for this?
- How could this be made possible with existing and hypothetical actors and infrastructures in local logistics?
During the development process, we will keep an eye on the risks of rebound effects and further precarization of courier service providers.