14 / SEEDWORLD.COM JANUARY 2019 “The most apparent place where we see the information economy is online,” Hughes says. “In the information economy, sharing adds value, whereas in the industrial economy scarcity added value.” Some ag businesses have sharing down, some are starting to come around to it, and still some come at it from a proprietary or capitalis- tic approach. But what’s needed to breakout or really make the sharing work? Information and a network, which farmers and companies have been collecting at record speed as of late. Seed compa- nies big and small are working to combine the two but none have successfully found the right combi- nation and/or approach to be truly disruptive. Outside of agriculture, Hughes points to the hotel group Hilton that took 100 years to reach its current size, now the biggest hotel group in the world. Airbnb, he says, has a completely different format. They don’t have hotels; they just provide access to people who have spare rooms, condos or houses, and travelers can connect with owners directly. You don’t need to have that central structure. “What’s very interesting about Airbnb is that it’s a mixture of the old economy and the new economy,” Hughes says. “You have hierarchies. Within the Airbnb organization, you have manage- ment, hierarchy and all these other things, but they use networks as their core tool of accessing the market. One economy doesn’t necessarily mean the complete annihilation of the old economy. “Those companies that best know how to use the mix of the old and the new are the ones that will be the most successful.” These disruptive businesses aren’t just limited to the hotel and travel industry. Entrepreneurs benefit from peer-to-peer financing, such as Prosper Marketplace, Zopa and Kickstarter — platforms that match people who have money with people who need money. Groups such as this have the opportunity to really change the banking busi- ness, according to the Central Bank in the United Kingdom. Then there’s Windows versus Linux (the basis of Android). “We are seeing this disruption all through the marketplace,” Hughes says. “No longer is it survival of the fittest. It’s the companies that can collabo- rate the best that are far stronger.” How might this apply to your business? SW “Those companies that best know how to use the mix of the old and the new are the ones that will be the most successful.” — Shane Hughes