Product ownership, redesigned

Product ownership, redesigned

Product ownership, redesigned

A "smart" shoe with a digital passport, as envisioned by EON — a digital passport service provider. Many manufacturers already add RFID or QR codes to their products — now imagine if they all linked to a global standardised database of products.

A "smart" shoe with a digital passport, as envisioned by EON — a digital passport service provider. Many manufacturers already add RFID or QR codes to their products — now imagine if they all linked to a global standardised database of products.

A "smart" shoe with a digital passport, as envisioned by EON — a digital passport service provider. Many manufacturers already add RFID or QR codes to their products — now imagine if they all linked to a global standardised database of products.

Imagine every product was tagged with an inexpensive unique RFID tag: swipe them with your phone, and share them on P2P sharing platforms, with one tap. Another tap, and you can mark them for sale. A lightweight RFID revolution to make products circular by default.

Imagine every product was tagged with an inexpensive unique RFID tag: swipe them with your phone, and share them on P2P sharing platforms, with one tap. Another tap, and you can mark them for sale. A lightweight RFID revolution to make products circular by default.

Imagine every product was tagged with an inexpensive unique RFID tag: swipe them with your phone, and share them on P2P sharing platforms, with one tap. Another tap, and you can mark them for sale. A lightweight RFID revolution to make products circular by default.

Consumption around the world follows a well-known pattern of production, purchase, use, and disposal. A “linear economy”, as opposed to the “circular economy” promoted by some contemporary economic philosophies.

Product purchase and ownership remain central in the way we consume things. Symbol of the success of industrialisation, the economic boom in the ‘50 promoted the concept of private property and impulsive shopping, creating the consumerism in which we live and swim today.

While there are obvious advantages behind private ownership — for both economic systems and individual consumers —, a number of trends are putting the ownership paradigm under pressure.

For a start, sustainability. Private ownership has made our homes, basements, and workspaces packed with objects — over 10.000 objects per household, according to some estimates. These products add up to huge amounts of resources, labour, and energy, trapped into objects that, in some cases, lay idle for over 90% of their product lifecycle. As opposed to mountains of unused objects, the shift towards a circular economy requires products to be used, reused, shared, and repaired more.

Secondly, households are shrinking in size, with a larger number of people in Western societies living alone and having fewer or no kids. Together with a urbanisation trend, this means smaller homes and less space to store objects — while the need for them remains virtually the same.

In the wake of these transformations, there is space for new ownership paradigms to emerge.

The early wave of Sharing Economy created one of these new paradigms: the idea of “Access over Ownership”. Mobile and digital technologies allowed, back then, to easily grant access to shared assets — Airbnb, Uber, bike- and car-sharing schemes are all part of this transformation.

Another, more recent new paradigm is Product-as-a-Service. Companies like SwapFiets give access to products, often with a service layer on top, in exchange for a monthly fee. Some art galleries offer artworks for monthly subscriptions.

How might we move to a circular type of consumption, while preserving the benefits of ownerships?

The burden of sharing

Our economic model is optimised for selling new products, not for sharing. In both physical and digital stores, new products are accompanied by tags, detailed information, product description, professional pictures, brand materials, and come in multiple sizes and colours.

As soon as the products reach your home, this data is lost. The same pair of jeans that was sold with an entire marketing story attached to it, photos, and pre-filled information about size, colours, and materials, that same pair of jeans is now mostly just a piece of garment.

The loss of information makes products hard to share or resell. Sharing or reselling them means re-building marketing information, re-filling product information, taking (ugly) pictures of the products. This can easily take 5 to 15 minutes, for each product you may want to share or resell, for each platform.

There is a problem of breadth of choice too. When you buy new products, you are offered a broad spectrum of alternatives. Second-hand stores have a much smaller selection. And consequently, first-hand stores get a mental preference by most consumers over second-hand stores. In some rare cases, first- and second-hand options are displayed in the same store: this is the case with Amazon — where “used” options, when available, are offered next to their new counterparts.

A systemic roadmap for increased product sharing

The shift to a circular paradigm of consumption needs quite a radical systemic transformation, with a large number of actors moving together. We make the case here for a paradigmatic transformation supported by a number of simultaneous changes:

  • an open standard for digital passports and product categorisation, linked to current barcode standard;

  • the progressive introduction of unique identifiers (either barcodes, QR codes, or RFID tags) on products, linked to their digital passport;

  • organic growth of sharing and reselling options, both on first- and second-hand platforms, thanks to easier link to product information;

  • installation of street closets for product sharing, to ease the burden of collection and recollection.

Consumption around the world follows a well-known pattern of production, purchase, use, and disposal. A “linear economy”, as opposed to the “circular economy” promoted by some contemporary economic philosophies.

Product purchase and ownership remain central in the way we consume things. Symbol of the success of industrialisation, the economic boom in the ‘50 promoted the concept of private property and impulsive shopping, creating the consumerism in which we live and swim today.

While there are obvious advantages behind private ownership — for both economic systems and individual consumers —, a number of trends are putting the ownership paradigm under pressure.

For a start, sustainability. Private ownership has made our homes, basements, and workspaces packed with objects — over 10.000 objects per household, according to some estimates. These products add up to huge amounts of resources, labour, and energy, trapped into objects that, in some cases, lay idle for over 90% of their product lifecycle. As opposed to mountains of unused objects, the shift towards a circular economy requires products to be used, reused, shared, and repaired more.

Secondly, households are shrinking in size, with a larger number of people in Western societies living alone and having fewer or no kids. Together with a urbanisation trend, this means smaller homes and less space to store objects — while the need for them remains virtually the same.

In the wake of these transformations, there is space for new ownership paradigms to emerge.

The early wave of Sharing Economy created one of these new paradigms: the idea of “Access over Ownership”. Mobile and digital technologies allowed, back then, to easily grant access to shared assets — Airbnb, Uber, bike- and car-sharing schemes are all part of this transformation.

Another, more recent new paradigm is Product-as-a-Service. Companies like SwapFiets give access to products, often with a service layer on top, in exchange for a monthly fee. Some art galleries offer artworks for monthly subscriptions.

How might we move to a circular type of consumption, while preserving the benefits of ownerships?

The burden of sharing

Our economic model is optimised for selling new products, not for sharing. In both physical and digital stores, new products are accompanied by tags, detailed information, product description, professional pictures, brand materials, and come in multiple sizes and colours.

As soon as the products reach your home, this data is lost. The same pair of jeans that was sold with an entire marketing story attached to it, photos, and pre-filled information about size, colours, and materials, that same pair of jeans is now mostly just a piece of garment.

The loss of information makes products hard to share or resell. Sharing or reselling them means re-building marketing information, re-filling product information, taking (ugly) pictures of the products. This can easily take 5 to 15 minutes, for each product you may want to share or resell, for each platform.

There is a problem of breadth of choice too. When you buy new products, you are offered a broad spectrum of alternatives. Second-hand stores have a much smaller selection. And consequently, first-hand stores get a mental preference by most consumers over second-hand stores. In some rare cases, first- and second-hand options are displayed in the same store: this is the case with Amazon — where “used” options, when available, are offered next to their new counterparts.

A systemic roadmap for increased product sharing

The shift to a circular paradigm of consumption needs quite a radical systemic transformation, with a large number of actors moving together. We make the case here for a paradigmatic transformation supported by a number of simultaneous changes:

  • an open standard for digital passports and product categorisation, linked to current barcode standard;

  • the progressive introduction of unique identifiers (either barcodes, QR codes, or RFID tags) on products, linked to their digital passport;

  • organic growth of sharing and reselling options, both on first- and second-hand platforms, thanks to easier link to product information;

  • installation of street closets for product sharing, to ease the burden of collection and recollection.

Consumption around the world follows a well-known pattern of production, purchase, use, and disposal. A “linear economy”, as opposed to the “circular economy” promoted by some contemporary economic philosophies.

Product purchase and ownership remain central in the way we consume things. Symbol of the success of industrialisation, the economic boom in the ‘50 promoted the concept of private property and impulsive shopping, creating the consumerism in which we live and swim today.

While there are obvious advantages behind private ownership — for both economic systems and individual consumers —, a number of trends are putting the ownership paradigm under pressure.

For a start, sustainability. Private ownership has made our homes, basements, and workspaces packed with objects — over 10.000 objects per household, according to some estimates. These products add up to huge amounts of resources, labour, and energy, trapped into objects that, in some cases, lay idle for over 90% of their product lifecycle. As opposed to mountains of unused objects, the shift towards a circular economy requires products to be used, reused, shared, and repaired more.

Secondly, households are shrinking in size, with a larger number of people in Western societies living alone and having fewer or no kids. Together with a urbanisation trend, this means smaller homes and less space to store objects — while the need for them remains virtually the same.

In the wake of these transformations, there is space for new ownership paradigms to emerge.

The early wave of Sharing Economy created one of these new paradigms: the idea of “Access over Ownership”. Mobile and digital technologies allowed, back then, to easily grant access to shared assets — Airbnb, Uber, bike- and car-sharing schemes are all part of this transformation.

Another, more recent new paradigm is Product-as-a-Service. Companies like SwapFiets give access to products, often with a service layer on top, in exchange for a monthly fee. Some art galleries offer artworks for monthly subscriptions.

How might we move to a circular type of consumption, while preserving the benefits of ownerships?

The burden of sharing

Our economic model is optimised for selling new products, not for sharing. In both physical and digital stores, new products are accompanied by tags, detailed information, product description, professional pictures, brand materials, and come in multiple sizes and colours.

As soon as the products reach your home, this data is lost. The same pair of jeans that was sold with an entire marketing story attached to it, photos, and pre-filled information about size, colours, and materials, that same pair of jeans is now mostly just a piece of garment.

The loss of information makes products hard to share or resell. Sharing or reselling them means re-building marketing information, re-filling product information, taking (ugly) pictures of the products. This can easily take 5 to 15 minutes, for each product you may want to share or resell, for each platform.

There is a problem of breadth of choice too. When you buy new products, you are offered a broad spectrum of alternatives. Second-hand stores have a much smaller selection. And consequently, first-hand stores get a mental preference by most consumers over second-hand stores. In some rare cases, first- and second-hand options are displayed in the same store: this is the case with Amazon — where “used” options, when available, are offered next to their new counterparts.

A systemic roadmap for increased product sharing

The shift to a circular paradigm of consumption needs quite a radical systemic transformation, with a large number of actors moving together. We make the case here for a paradigmatic transformation supported by a number of simultaneous changes:

  • an open standard for digital passports and product categorisation, linked to current barcode standard;

  • the progressive introduction of unique identifiers (either barcodes, QR codes, or RFID tags) on products, linked to their digital passport;

  • organic growth of sharing and reselling options, both on first- and second-hand platforms, thanks to easier link to product information;

  • installation of street closets for product sharing, to ease the burden of collection and recollection.

A widespread adoption of product passports requires a collaboration amongst a breadth of actors. First, the coordination of regulatory bodies (e.g. the European Union) or standard holders (e.g. GS1) would be beneficial for the creation of a global standard for product passports. Secondly, a (yet to be formed) product passport service layer would be needed to connect individual RFID tags with landing pages, providing branded content, and allowing one-tap posting on sharing and selling platforms.

A widespread adoption of product passports requires a collaboration amongst a breadth of actors. First, the coordination of regulatory bodies (e.g. the European Union) or standard holders (e.g. GS1) would be beneficial for the creation of a global standard for product passports. Secondly, a (yet to be formed) product passport service layer would be needed to connect individual RFID tags with landing pages, providing branded content, and allowing one-tap posting on sharing and selling platforms.

A widespread adoption of product passports requires a collaboration amongst a breadth of actors. First, the coordination of regulatory bodies (e.g. the European Union) or standard holders (e.g. GS1) would be beneficial for the creation of a global standard for product passports. Secondly, a (yet to be formed) product passport service layer would be needed to connect individual RFID tags with landing pages, providing branded content, and allowing one-tap posting on sharing and selling platforms.

The case for product passports

Product categorisation standards already exist and they fundamentally support the trade and sale of services and goods around the world. They are also a relatively recent development — for example, the first product to display a barcode was a pack of chewing gums in 1974. Now try running a supermarket or a fashion store without barcodes.

We envision an extension of product standards — for example, the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), currently managed by the non-for-profit GS1 — to allow the storage of additional product information. Product description, materials, nutritional information, images, and recommended price, could all be added to this extended product passport. Product owners could then link this data to their e-commerce platforms or product management systems.

Ideally, the responsibility for the creation of a product passport standard would lay in the hands of public or not-for-profit organisations (like GS1) to guarantee a global standard and avoid the creation of too many data lakes.

Digital passports of products. Each product's tag links to a unique digital passport, with pre-filled information about the product.

Digital passports of products. Each product's tag links to a unique digital passport, with pre-filled information about the product.

Digital passports of products. Each product's tag links to a unique digital passport, with pre-filled information about the product.

One step further: unique product passports

GTIN and other product standards usually identify a product, but not the unique object. Although potentially expensive — potential economies of scale should be evaluated —, assigning a unique code to each individual item would unlock considerable new opportunities.

On the producer’s side, a unique product code would improve traceability and analytics, it would guarantee product authenticity, and it would remove the need for additional serial numbers (think of electronics).

Producers could also add dynamic branded content, allowing a more direct connection with the customers through the product — imagine to be able to play how-to videos by scanning the GTIN on your drill, or to be able to purchase expansions for your board game.

Consumers could gain considerable benefits too. Sharing and reselling, the core starting point for this analysis, would become way faster and easier: imagine simply scanning a product with your phone, and mark it for sale on multiple P2P platforms, with just one click.

Have you lost your glasses, wallet, coat, or earplugs? People who found theme could simply scan the tag with their phones, and reach out to you. Products would also be harder to steal, as each product could be uniquely marked with a physical person.

Or again: imagine to quickly contact customer support (and the agent knows already the specific product it is being inquired about).

Organic growth of sharing and reselling options

Although P2P product sharing platforms have mostly failed, we believe that the systematic introduction of product passports — especially in their second form described above, the one where each item receives a unique identifier — could make the difference in reaching that critical mass required for the proper success of sharing platforms.

A particular boost to second-hand sales would come from the unification of first- and second-hand platforms. As mentioned before, Amazon is a great example for this: used products are offered contextually with new products. While not common on other platforms, we could imagine proprietary e-commerce website and wholesalers introduce second-hand solutions, by connecting to the pool of products currently put for sale by private users.

The final result: imagine swiping your phone over your valuables, and get showed a product ID and more: instant access to branded material, and connection to sharing platforms and second-hand marketplaces.

The final result: imagine swiping your phone over your valuables, and get showed a product ID and more: instant access to branded material, and connection to sharing platforms and second-hand marketplaces.

The final result: imagine swiping your phone over your valuables, and get showed a product ID and more: instant access to branded material, and connection to sharing platforms and second-hand marketplaces.

While there are obvious advantages behind private ownership — for both economic systems and individual consumers —, a number of trends are putting the ownership paradigm under pressure.

Facilitating pick-ups and returns: street lockers

While product passports ease the burden of filling in the product information on sharing platforms, there is still one major burden to be addressed: pick-ups and returns. Renting out your drill or sleeping bag for a weekend means you need to agree with the borrower on a pick-up time on Saturday morning and a return time on Sunday evening. Far from ideal.

A similar business, home deliveries, has been faced for years with the same dilemma: how to deliver parcels to customers safely and conveniently, avoiding expensive missed deliveries? A range of solutions have emerged over time: emails with estimates of delivery time, delivery to neighbour, delivery to nearby stores or post offices, and delivery in street lockers.

In the specific case of product sharing, we argue that a growing number of street lockers could be one of the most convenient solutions to address the problem of pick-ups and returns. Not only they would serve as pick-up and return points for shared products, but they would also act as an extension of storage space, particularly useful for those living in tiny homes in dense urban contexts. Also, they can be easily located — e.g. they could be marked on Google Maps — in contrast to finding your way inside a large apartment building.

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