...

...

Business revolution: What is the membership economy? New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink/youtube Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos:

Business revolution: What is the membership economy? New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink/youtube Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I think that the membership economy is having as big an impact on business as the industrial revolution," says Silicon Valley consultant Robbie Kellman Baxter. Memberships or subscriptions fundamentally change the relationship between the consumer and the brand by delivering what Baxter calls a "forever promise." The famous example of Blockbuster vs. Netflix illustrates this perfectly. Subscriptions are not a new idea. Charles Dickens released his books to subscribers one chapter at a time, as he wrote them. What's different today is technology and the speed at which even a one-person business can reach a huge number of customers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROBBIE KELLMAN BAXTER Based in Silicon Valley, Robbie is the author of The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction & Build Recurring Revenue (McGraw-Hill 2015), andThe Forever Transaction: How to Build a Business So Compelling, Your Customers Will Never Want to Leave (McGraw-Hill 2020). Robbie’s expertise extends to include SaaS, media, consumer products and retail and community organizations. Clients have included Microsoft, Fitbit and the Wall Street Journal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: The membership economy is a term that I coined to describe what I was seeing starting about 15 years ago when I was working with Netflix and continuing into this massive transformational trend where companies of all types were moving from a model that focuses on ownership to access, from the transactional to the relational, from anonymous to known, from one payment to many smaller payments and from the organization talking at the customer and hoping they’re listening to multidirectional communication among customers and back and forth between the customers and the organization under the brand umbrella of the organization. So when you put all of those things together you have this kind of painter’s palette to reinvent your business model and that’s what’s driving this membership economy. So membership isn’t a new concept. We have been joining things for as long as there have been humans. We joined clans or tribes. We’ve had professional societies and trade guilds for centuries. Charles Dickens sold his novels in subscription format so people subscribed to have access and as he had the chapters done he would deliver them to his subscribers. So this is not a new concept, but what has changed is the ability to build a business model around it that transcends time and space. So Charles Dickens actually had to know the people he was delivering to, had to print it out, had to bring it to them. Today we can deliver it to strangers digitally and we can do it with time lapse. So that has created so many possibilities for organizations to build this ongoing relationship which is what people want. One example of the difference between a membership economy company and a non-membership economy company is the comparison between Blockbuster and Netflix. So when people, you know, way back when people used to have to go to the corner store to the Blockbuster on a Friday night to see what movies were available to rent, bring them home and it was never the movie that you really wanted. It was whatever happened to be available. And then if you forgot that you had it and you kept it for a few extra days the cost would end up being like triple what you thought it was going to be. And compare that to Netflix where they sent you three DVDs at a time, so three movies that you had on your long list, your queue. You didn’t have to leave your home. You always had three movies at home. And, best of all no late fees. So it’s a very different way of thinking about the model that starts with a forever promise. A promise of what it is that you really want to achieve. So in the case of Netflix versus Blockbuster, which was what really inspired me, what I wanted was to always have movies, professionally created content delivered in the most efficient way possible because I had little babies, with cost certainty – no late fees. And that’s what Netflix delivered on 15 years ago that pretty much put Blockbuster out of business. And today even though they have streaming, even though they create their own content, even though a lot has changed at Netflix they still deliver everyday on that promise of professional created content delivered with cost certainty in the most efficient way possible.

...

Rowing across the Atlantic Ocean gave Kate Salmon a shocking glimpse of the scale of plastic pollution. Back on dry land, her crew were determined to do something about the problem. She explains how

Rowing across the Atlantic Ocean gave Kate Salmon a shocking glimpse of the scale of plastic pollution. Back on dry land, her crew were determined to do something about the problem. She explains how getting a city to take responsibility for its plastic consumption can bring people together. Kate Salmon is an applied scientist at the Met Office, where she uses weather and climate data to help decision-makers plan for climate change. She was part of Row for the Ocean, the fastest all-female team to finish the 2018 Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. The crew set up Plastic Free Exeter, which aims to make Exeter the UK’s largest single-use ‘plastic-free’ city by 2020. __ At TEDxExeter 2019 our theme was The Art of the Possible. We’re living in an age of polarity where many communities are feeling more and more divided, against a backdrop of increasingly populist politics which risk dividing us even further. Our talks offer an opportunity to pause and consider the future we want to create, the possibilities that may be obscured in the busyness of our everyday lives, and how we might get there. Find out more about TEDxExeter at www.tedxexeter.com TEDxExeter CURATOR: Claire Kennedy - @clairekennedy__ PRODUCTION: First Sight Media - @firstsightmedia Kate Salmon is an applied scientist at the Met Office, where she uses weather and climate data to help decision-makers plan for climate change. She was part of Row for the Ocean, the fastest all-female team to finish the 2018 Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. The crew set up Plastic Free Exeter, which aims to make Exeter the UK's largest 'plastic-free' city by 2020. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

...

Money's an agreement.  It has no value all by itself. Starting

Read more

Email a Friend