New values for a new world

Lucía Hernández joined me on Inside Ideas in April to share her expert insight on the platform-based business models used by the likes of Facebook and Uber – which create value by facilitating communication between consumers and producers.

“It is a more efficient way of organising value-creation,” she said of platform-based business models. “It’s also more transparent because of the ratings consumers give in the platform and they are more economic because once you have the infrastructure, the cost of aggregating new producers or new assets is almost zero.”

Lucía is an expert evaluator of the European Commission and the president of OuiShare, an international Think and Do Tank that explores how the platform economy is impacting different sectors, markets, organisations, citizens and society in general. And as an independent consultant, she helps organisations in designing platform-ecosystem strategies within Boundaryless, the company behind Platform Design Toolkit, a methodology to help public and private bodies build business models from a platform-ecosystem point of view.

And in a bid to ensure these models move with the times she is always exploring the ways regenerative, ecosystem and networked strategies can help achieve impact at scale.

“People want a new model – or a regenerative model, so I think that the emergence of this regenerative, or living systems thinking is really something that emerged from us looking for solutions to what is really not working,” she added.

At a time when the mood music is very much behind a future as far removed from ‘business as usual’ as possible, it is great moment to return to my deep dive with Lucía to explore some of the models that might replace it.