When I quit my job as a corporate strategist in 2004 to pursue a new life based on sharing and collaboration, it was not the result of any external observation. It was something I felt in my bones — long hours, strained relationships, loss of a sense of place, and cutthroat competition were not making me happy, and I suspected neither were they contributing to a healthier world.
As I embarked on a new life of building relationships, cultivating a sharing economy and ultimately launching Shareable, I didn’t have a road map. But, by opening up my life to a new way of being, things just started happening — resources appeared, and new, more collaborative, effective, and fulfilling ways of doing things emerged. I began to see that others were thinking along the same lines, and that other ways of doing business, from car sharing to open source software, were emerging all around me, much of it enabled by network technology.