Changing Communities and Lifestyles by "Sharing" Skills!

2018/12/12

Picking up children when you're running late for work. Assembling furniture you can't do alone. Taking care of pets during a fun trip, or minor computer repairs. You want to ask someone for help, but there's no one you can turn to...

In the past, Japan had local communities with "strong ties" where people helped each other in times of need, such as neighbors babysitting or helping with carpentry. However, in just the last few decades, these neighborhood relationships have become increasingly diluted. After I started living alone following graduation from university, I rarely even saw the people in the same apartment building, and I truly felt this dilution.

"Can we restore community connections?" With that thought in mind, we developed "ANYTIMES," an application that connects people who "need a little help" with people who say "I'm good at that" via the internet. For example, people who want to request daily chores like house cleaning, cooking, furniture assembly, or dog walking meet on this platform with people who want to be useful and work in their spare time to request and receive jobs. It is, so to speak, a "sharing economy of skills." As an online service, it can be used 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, anywhere in Japan, and registration is free. Through this business, we are trying to reconstruct the diluting local communities into a form suited to the current era: "loose ties."

The "strong ties" that used to exist were communities of relatives and fellow members of the same neighborhood association, so they helped each other in a volunteer-like manner. On the other hand, "loose ties" are thin relationships like casual acquaintances, so it is difficult to help each other for free, and it is necessary to involve "money." However, this allows people to avoid feeling burdened or apologetic. It also becomes a new economic activity. Furthermore, with "loose ties," if there is a problem, the necessary person will come to the necessary place at the necessary time. With the penetration of such services, new "loose" communities with neighborhood acquaintances are gradually beginning to emerge. A community that provides this kind of sense of security will be necessary not only for the younger generation but also in the upcoming super-aging society.

Additionally, this service has another great potential: the way people work. An increasing number of full-time housewives, active seniors, and people working side jobs or multiple jobs are utilizing their past experiences and special skills to work at their own pace. Furthermore, there have been cases where people have started their own businesses after working through ANYTIMES.

Actually, there is a reason for this. Jobs completed through ANYTIMES are not a dispatch model, but rather direct service contracts between individuals. In other words, the contractor works as a sole proprietor. Evaluations are not through an employer as in the past, but rather through direct comments from the requester, all of which are displayed on one's public profile. By doing so, the individual's awareness and sense of responsibility are strengthened, leading to confidence. We have received many comments from users who have taken on jobs, such as "I was able to realize my own new potential. There is joy beyond just earning money," and "I am happy that the housework I used to do as a matter of course just for my family is now valued as a skill, becomes a job, and makes people happy."

Currently, the types of services established on ANYTIMES are diverse; in addition to housework, there are things like computer repair, language and music lessons, and consultations. Since our goal is strictly the "construction of new local communities," we believe it is important not to specialize the business in specific skills or services, but to increase connections between people by matching diverse needs and skills—or, from another perspective, to increase the "local circulation of skills."

When we were founded in 2013, even the term "sharing economy" was not recognized at all. Five years later, the number of companies practicing sharing economy services is increasing, and awareness is spreading; it is said that the market size will reach 138.6 billion yen in 2022 (estimate by Yano Research Institute). However, the number of people who have actually used sharing economy services is still a minority in Japan, and the reality is that there are still very few users, especially in the field of skills.

In the future, I believe that the penetration of the sharing economy will promote the construction of new "loose" mutual aid systems in regions and the creation of diverse ways of working and living. Through our sharing economy service business, we want to realize a society with a wealth of measures for happiness, unfettered by social frameworks or fixed ideas.