Lisa Gansky, co-founder and CEO of multiple Internet companies, including GNN and Ofoto, today launched The Mesh Directory (http://www.meshing.it), the companion website to her forthcoming book, The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing. In The Mesh, being published by Portfolio / Penguin Group in Fall 2010, Gansky reveals how there is real money to be made and trusted brands and strong communities to be built in helping customers buy less but use more.
The Mesh Directory is being launched as a compilation of more than 1500 businesses worldwide that are helping to create the sharing economy by using technology to give people convenient access to goods and services. With the goal of expanding the Mesh that Gansky describes in her book, the directory invites participation from Mesh businesses to connect to one another. Additionally, by providing an official platform for declaring themselves a Mesh business, companies are able to validate their participation in a movement that venture capitalist David Hornik of August Capital says is important for anyone who cares about the planet or is looking to make a ton of money.
Businesses as big as Netflix and as small as a guy in LA who rents Christmas trees, have figured out that access trumps ownership, said Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh and creator of The Mesh Directory. At a time when were increasingly conscious of how weve raced through our personal, financial, and environmental assets, The Mesh provides a blueprint for reshaping how businesses go to market while improving our communities and our planet.
From gifts and gardening to education and energy, The Mesh Directory provides a searchable index of the companies that are creating, sharing and using 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.
Examples of well-known Mesh companies include Zipcar, FedEx, Amazon Web Services, and craigslist. Other lesser-known companies found in the book and the directory, include:
