Consume. Connect. Collaborate.

You are looking at a box that has been in the spare room or basement for a while and you wonder what you should do with its contents. You don’t even know why you’re keeping it but you can’t bring yourself to get rid of it. You may need it one day. It seems to be easier to build up clutter than clear it out of your life.

Now imagine if some of that stuff was wanted by others. And you've been looking for some of their stuff. The old cliché – one person’s trash is another person’s treasure is alive and well. And technology has allowed us to accelerate it through the social web.

You could hold a garage sale or post some of the stuff on a website for sale. You could also visit a social networking swap site for some collaborative consumption.

Rachel Botsman is the co-author of a book entitled What's Mine Is Yours. She also consults and speaks about the power of collaboration and sharing through online social networks. Botsman founded an innovation incubator called CCLab which works businesses of all sizes to help them with collaborate consumption.

This is her recent presentation at TEDx Sydney.


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visual credit: TED