Distinguished Lecture: Why the Future of Business is Sharing
Traditional businesses follow a simple formula: create a product or service, sell it, collect money. But in the last few years a fundamentally different model has taken root — one in which consumers have more choices, more tools, more information, and more peer-to-peer power. Pioneering entrepreneur Lisa Gansky calls it the Mesh and reveals why it will soon dominate the future of business.
Mesh companies create, share and use social media, wireless networks, and data crunched from every available source to provide people with goods and services at the exact moment they need them, without the burden and expense of owning them outright. Gansky reveals how there is real money to be made and trusted brands and strong communities to be built in helping your customers buy less but use more.
As CEO, co-founder, and chairman of Ofoto (now Kodak Gallery), Lisa drew on her entrepreneurial spirit and experience developing global web services. Lisa and the team worked to develop Ofoto into a world-class consumer-services offering, which she left once Kodak Gallery reached over 45 million customers in 2005. In addition to her roles at Ofoto and Eastman Kodak, she was a co-founder and CEO of GNN, the first commercial website, acquired by AOL in 1995; she then directed internet services for AOL through 1997. Lisa has been an investor and board member of more than twenty internet and mobile services companies.
Currently, Lisa serves as a board member and investor of Me Please, Squidoo, TasteBook, and Dos Margaritas, an environmental foundation. She is an advisor/investor in several new ventures including: New Resource Bank, Slide, Instructables, Nuko toys, Addis Creson, and Greenbiz.
She is also the author of the upcoming book "The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing".
—Lisa Gansky
