This summer, OuiShare embarked on a new ambitious project aimed at helping local governments seize the potential opportunities offered by the collaborative economy. This new venture is called Sharitories. With Sharitories, we are designing a set of tools, the Collaborative Territories Toolkit (CTT) that enable local authorities to implement the collaborative economy at a local level. The CTT includes three levels of possible engagement: awareness, facilitation and building the local collaborative economy. The main audience for the toolkit is local governments, as well as “trouble makers”, who can be active citizens, groups and organisations. Each level of engagement of the CTT contains a process board outlining major milestones, tools and actors potentially involved in transforming a region. The first milestone of the project was a co-creation workshop with over 100 participants held at the Smart City Exhibition in Bologna. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHw7gG5mApI
Building the knowledge
The very first step of Sharitories was to create a knowledge repository where we could gather inspiring stories from around the world. This turned into our project website, where we started publishing both updates from the project and initial research findings.
Phase one leading up to Bologna consisted of 10 interviews with collaborative economy experts, as well as a literature review of existing toolkits used in development and innovation contexts. Below are six recommendations, or highlights - derived from these 10 interviews - on how to best deal with the collaborative economy locally: 1- Raise global awareness. Can be achieved through the organization of one big participative event to enable people to learn and do by themselves, a communication plan or workshops for policy makers (see Anne-Sophie Novel). Furthermore, we need to boost the convergence between a clear political vision and the bottom up dynamics scattered among citizens (see Gwendal Briand). 2- Engage and work with all stakeholders. Working with a combination of different departments with a transversal approach allows you to get a strong support (see April Rinne). Looking at democratic and participatory processes enables citizens and community to actively take part in decision making (see Tomas Diez). It is crucial to work not only with local governments but also with others stakeholders such as businesses, schools, research institutions, citizens and other organizations. 3- Reset local governments as platforms. Their role is to facilitate the emergence of projects from citizens and businesses through logistic, communication and acceleration processes. As a matter of fact, the collaborative economy is neither exclusively public nor private: it is shared (see Christian Iaione). A regional approach can lead to the creation of peer-to-peer clusters by bringing together all the stakeholders involved. At a national level, a hub of competences and expertise can be useful in gathering best practices, starting up experimentations in different territories and disseminating knowledge among regions. 4- Show the financial benefits to local governments. It is crucial to show policy makers the benefits of the collaborative economy (see Cecilia Tham). Sharitories will include a clear impact assessment of the collaborative economy in terms of employment, economic development, social inclusion, and environmental protection. The collaborative territories toolkit should help regions reach objectives such as diminishing % CO2 emissions (see Marco Torregrossa). 5- Find tailor made solutions for each region. There is a risk of fatigue from policy makers when the collaborative economy is presented as another groundbreaking model (see Marta Mainieri). The most important thing is to talk to policy makers from the perspective of their agenda and make sure our argument for the collaborative economy addresses their greatest needs. Each city has its unique hot buttons (see Neal Gorenflo). 6- Regulate smoothly. Preserving some privileges by slowing down the innovation process is surely not effective while leaving the market without regulation can be destructive for regions. You need to find the balance. The agreement between the city of Amsterdam and Portland with AirBnb that allows a certain amount of nights per year is a good example of such a regulation (see Harmen Van Sprang). Dominant, integrated, mainstream. In 2025, and despite some difficulties encountered in their work, all the interviewees perceive the collaborative economy as THE economy. Sharitories intends to pave the way to making this claim reality at a city and regional level.
Co-creating the Collaborative Territories Toolkit
Phase one lead up to the first “reality check” of our work, the workshop and presentation held in Bologna during the Smart City Exhibition. Our main goal was to make the opportunities of the collaborative economy more visible to local policy-makers. Therefore we introduced the collaborative economy with storytelling, based on a true story of Spanish OuiShare connector Cristobal Gracia. Next we introduced our first prototype, a “serious board game”. Participants were given 30 different collaborative scenarios (i.e. short descriptions of some existing collaborative or peer-to-peer services and initiatives) that could help solve local regional challenges defined by the participants themselves. They were then asked to assign “experts” from the various themes included in the scenarios booklet and to study the collaborative scenarios relevant to their assigned area, such as mobility, spaces for creativity, housing, food, and so on. Within each area, there were descriptions of the relevant scenarios, as well as icons attached to each. In the next step, they were asked to map out where these scenarios may help to resolve the territorial challenges identified, with each “expert” giving their input.
Our audience seemed to be particularly keen on participatory democracy, peer-to-peer learning and user cooperatives, which were the scenario picked most frequently as solutions during the board game. Another recurring scenario was time banks, indeed a great catalyst for social inclusion and inter-generational exchange. You can read in detail about how the workshop was organised, as well as on the feedback we received afterwards, in this Sharitories post. Moreover, the fruits of this initial work are now available in an Alpha draft of the Collaborative Territories Toolkit. It is open for comments and we warmly invite all readers to have a look and suggest how we can improve the approach. [embed]http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/41065479[/embed]
Call to action - partnering with local governments
The prototyped board game is of course not the only feature of the Collaborative Territories Toolkit. This work is now well under way, with different partnership models and pioneer cities in the pipeline. The team has grown too, with new members in Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Belgium, where the workshop carried out in Bologna has been tried in local contexts. Now the idea of creating a “Sharitories club” of pioneer regions appears to be quite popular. We are looking for pilot territories willing to engage into this process of exploring collaborative solutions together with the citizens. We need bold and ambitious leaders from all over the world, who are passionate about local development and see the collaborative economy as a chance to infuse existing efforts with new energy to make this world a slightly better place. We hope that you would like to join our adventure! There are three ways you can get involved today:
- Firstly, we are always looking for new inspiring stories, for instance about peer-to-peer ridesharing in Belgium, or Map-jams in Sweden. We want you to contribute with your stories, insights and experiences. Do you know cool stories in your region related to the collaborative economy? Please send them to us at info@sharitories.net!
- Second, this is an Alpha Draft. Please give it a read and give us feedback to make it better. The document is open for comments and we know you have a lot to say! OuiShare – Collaborative Territories Toolkit Alpha Release – Open For Comments
- Third, become an Adopter, Patron, Supporter or a Promoter! Depending on your mission you can find a way to become part of the project: public and semi-public institutions can adopt the Sharitories approach, private companies can help us develop the kit further and changemakers can promote, use and give feedback: check out this page to learn more about the various possibilities.