ZipCar Founder Urges WPI Students To Innovate
COURTESY/ BRANDON BUTLER
Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar, speaks to students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute Thursday night.
Solutions to the problems of tomorrow do not require major multi-billion investments and massive infrastructures to support them, according to Robin Chase, founder of the online car-sharing company Zipcar.
Instead, Chase told students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute Thursday night that the key is to tap the unused potential of already-in-use items. Doing so reduces investment and overhead costs and creates more sustainable solutions.
It's the model Chase used when she began Zipcar in Cambridge 10 years ago. Although Chase left the company in 2003, it has now grown to more 450,000 members sharing 7,000 cars that are rented by the hour in urban areas around the country.
Chase gave students numerous examples of how excess capacity can be used as a sustainable solution.
While the traditional model of bed sharing is a hotel, Chase cited a website named CouchSurfing.org, which allows users to find someone's extra couch anywhere in the world. In just a few years the company has grown to include more than 850,000 couches in 2000 countries and 71 cities. That rivals the Hilton hotel chain which has spent 90 years building 3,400 hotels in 79 countries.
There are no overhead costs to Couchsurfing, Chase said. It's an online community and each end-user supplies his or her excess capacity, which is a couch, and shares it with the world. In response, those members can use other people's couches.
Skype, the online communications program, is similar. It uses the already-in-place network infrastructure on computers to create a telecommunications company that rivals some of the largest businesses in the world.
Chase challenged WPI students to find their own models to base the solutions on.
"Go out and build the platforms, have ideas," Chase told the students. "I'm counting on you guys for our future."
Her speech was part of the Great Problems Seminar, which WPI started four year ago to encourage students to examine and solve the biggest problems facing the world. Freshmen students spend the first half of a semester-long course learning about a major problem, from energy efficiency and poverty to expanding health coverage around the world. Students then spend the second half of the course developing and presenting solutions to those problems.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments