Picture this: a well-dressed man enters the elevator of his high-rise condo, but instead of going down, he heads up to the roof. There, he hops inside his autonomous Uber aircraft and whizzes across town to the rooftop of his office building. The charge? $179, give-or-take surge pricing.
Much of Airbnb’s success is because the way people want to travel has changed – they want to experience a place as if they are a local. Airbnb aims to continue disrupting the travel industry with its latest app that pairs guests with hosts and neighborhoods. The app will also include guidebooks that showcase local tips and off-the-beaten-path suggestions.
When we talk about the “sharing economy,” Uber and Airbnb tend to be mentioned the same breath. A new study from the JPMorgan Chase Institute, finds that people who rent out assets on “capital” platforms like Airbnb or car-sharing site Turo are bringing in supplemental income. That’s starkly different from people who sign up for “labor” platforms like Uber or TaskRabbit.
If you opened your Uber app yesterday, you may not have recognized it! Uber has updated its logo - creating unique abstract identities for riders and drivers and bright color pallets depending on the region. While most CEOs hire brand experts, Uber’s CEO, with the help of a few employees, did it himself because this rebranding is personal.
For the government, it is hard to track today’s job market with individuals creating their own web of multiple part-time jobs through the sharing economy. Uncle Sam hasn’t figured out how to uphold labor standards and promote economic security in the new labor market. The government plans to include this workforce in the next population survey, expected in May 2017.
Can future innovations match the great inventions of the past? Will artificial intelligence, robots, 3D printing and other offspring of the digital revolution do for economic growth what the second industrial revolution did between 1920 and 1970? Technologists say yes. But Robert Gordon, the author of "The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” says no. The tech revolution's impact will not match the industrial revolution's.
Despite being the ideal users for many of these services, that can help lend an extra hand to busy moms, a recent survey from BabyCenter highlights lack of awareness of apps that offer on-demand/sharing economy services among moms who were frequent mobile device users.
Urban Outfitters has invested a surprising amount of time, space and money in restaurants lately. It has an eatery in its new concept store in Austin, Texas, as well as places to snack while shopping in its stores in Los Angeles, Brooklyn and Philadelphia. Brick-and-mortar retail has fallen in general this past year, so Urban Outfitter’s attempt to create a reason for consumers to stop by its stores is at least innovative. After all, consumer spending is actually going up at restaurants and bars.
Read more about your one-stop shop for skinny jeans and pizza here.
‘Tis the season for all the major research firms to predict the most likely and impactful trends in corporate America, and the overall theme is . . . the pace of digital innovation is accelerating and broadening. IDC predicts that 30 percent of today’s tech suppliers will have failed or been acquired by 2020 and that a third of the top 20 companies in every industry will be disrupted over the next three years!
The latest Pew Research highlights how family life is changing. Households in which both parents are working fulltime are on the rise and they fair better economically. When both parents work, the division of labor of the household work is more balanced, but women still tend to do a little bit more. Yet at the end of the day, fathers still out-earn mothers in most households, even when they both work.