Zilok

Short description

The world suffers from enormous overconsumption in the rich world (or more correctly among the rich people on the planet as many of those living the most unsustainable lives live in emerging or poor countries). Two parallel strategies are needed to address this challenge, one is to change values so that overconsumption is not seen as acceptable. The other is to make all consumption more sustainable.

Zilok is an interesting initiative that can help consumption become more sustainable, both in the short-term by encouraging people to rent instead of buy goods and therefore increase resource productivity, and in the long-term by encouraging a culture where the need to “own” things is decreased.

Zilok.com is an online marketplace that allows individuals and professionals to list any kind of items for rent, so that anyone can rent them. Zilok shows listings of all the items for rent in a given location along with their price, conditions and available dates, conveniently mapped around the location of the user.

For everyone:
> Find whatever you need, whenever you need it, wherever you are in our one-stop rental platform
> Access new fun and useful goods and discover new activities
> Make money out of your closet and garage
> Rent anything you can possibly imagine, not just apartments and cars!
> Do it all quickly, safely and cost-effectively

For the community:
> Promote a more sustainable way of consuming that saves natural resources
> Tighten the community bonds by having neighbours helping each other out
> Support local rental businesses

More about the initiative here.

The best with the app/supporting initiative

+ Support a shift from products to services by allowing people to rent what they need.

The weak parts of the app/supporting initiative

It is only a platform and does not directly support a broader policy shift in society.

What could accelerate this app/supporting initiative into a world changer?

> Spread the initiative to other countries.
> Collaborate with those campaigning for a service based economy.
> Addressing the challenge about ownership and innovation. Already today companies like Sony has used legal muscles against entrepreneurs, such as Geohot, that have used products bought from Sony for other things than what Sony wants. This is a major challenge for a service economy as it put way to much power in the provider of the service, and too little in the hands of the user.

Delivery

How direct is the delivery of the result the app tries to achieve
  • Direct
  • Indirect
  • Inspirational
  • Long shot

Comments

Each time someone rent instead of buy there is a potential saving. The transformative contribution is however indirect as the app helps users to approach ownership from a service perspective.

Transformative approach

How transformative is it
  • A new world
  • A major shift
  • A bit of a shake-up
  • A gentle rocking

Comments

The connectivity allows society to become a lot more resource efficient by ensuring that services can be provided where it is needed and in an optimal way. Not only does a lot of people buy things they hardly ever use, they buy more things that are of higher capacity than they use most of the (few) times they use it. Regardless if it is a power drill or a car people tend to buy things that are for the most extreme use they can think of. This makes sense when you buy one thing and then have to stick with it, but when you can rent things you can rent exactly what you need.

How much does it encourage collaborations

How much are new networks supported
  • Strong support for global networks?
  • Currently encourages new forms of collaboration
  • Provides interesting opportunities in the future
  • Restricted to a small (expert) group

Comments

There are obvious potentials to link up people that are interested in similar things that can share ideas. Such links could also help accelerate innovation if users can come together and discuss improvements in different ways.

What synergies can be delivered

How well does it also solve other problems/generate solutions
  • It solves everything
  • Several important challenges
  • Some important challenges
  • Only one challenge

Comments

Connecting people and supporting a service based economy can help deliver a more resource efficient economy, but also accelerate sustainable innovation, support development of new business models based on service and make society more transparent.

Nine billion contribution

How global is it? Is it helping/will it help everyone on the planet
  • Instant global equality
  • Almost global
  • Getting (incrementally) global
  • Not applicable

Comments

A more resource efficient society is necessary to ensure the possibility for poverty reduction. Renting services can also encourage interest in the history behind the products.

Building on current trends

How well does it use current trends
  • The app is setting new trends by itself
  • Building on multiple trends
  • Effectively building on one trend
  • Not really building on any major trend

Comments

Increased flexibility and possibility to use exactly what you need is something that a new generation will appreciate.

Timeframe

How fast can it deliver
  • It's already happening
  • In the coming weeks
  • In a year or so
  • In a distant future (hopefully)

Comments

Each time something is rented someone use a service instead of buying a product.

Transparency

Does it support transformative transparency
  • Brave new transparency
  • Transparency that is innovative (never seen before)
  • Increased transparency, but nothing innovative
  • No increase in transparency

Comments

More information about the products and the history of the use should be encouraged, but today transformative transparency is not really supported.

Comments are closed.