Doc Searls' 2012 book on the Intention Economy describes a world in which buyers will tell the market what they want to buy, and vendors will compete to provide it. The book is a call to arms for vendors to change their approach to customers, by providing them with the tools to become independent actors in the marketplace. The Solid project is a huge step towards this vision, by providing individuals with the tools to manage their own data, and to control who has access to it.
For example, a person might want to buy a new vacation package. They could use a Solid app to create a request for proposals, including a lot of personal data, which would be sent to all the travel agents they have a relationship with. The travel agent can then use this data to create a personalized proposal, which they can send back to the user.
In 2006, Doc Searls, co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, wrote an artcle in the Linux Journal called "The Intention Economy" His later book was called The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge. This describes a future economy in which buyers will tell the market what they want to buy, and vendors will compete to provide it. The book is a call to arms for vendors to change their approach to customers, by providing them with the tools to become independent actors in the marketplace.
Each vendor has access to only the user's data about that one domain. Banks have finanical data, Social networks have social data, Fitness apps have health data, travel agents have travel data, etc. The user has access to all their data, and can share it all, or none, with the vendor. The user can share it only for the purpose of a possible transaction, and can revoke the access at any time. The user can also share it with other vendors, and can compare the offers. The user can also share the offers with freinds and trusted advisors, who can help them make the decision.
For example, a person might want to buy a new vacation package. They could use a Solid app to create a request for proposals, which would be sent to all the travel agents, airlines, and hotel groups (say) they have a relationship with. The user has much more personal data in their pod than a travel agent ever would imagine having about a client. In this case the user has all the previous trips the family has taken, and all the photos from those trips; all the plces they stayed and the meals they ate and what they thought of them; the GPS tracks of each walk they took.
The user can offer to open the kimino -- to share all this with the travel agent, in order that they can then craft a really amazing experience for the next time around. The travel agent uses this data to create a great personalized proposal.
The overal result is a win-win. The user gets a great product, and the travel agent gets a great sale. A much better result than they would have got if it had worked through the travel agent trying to find the user and influence them though targetted advertizing -- distracting them when they were actually trying to do something else!
The Solid ecosystem has many new business models. It opens a pandora's box of new ways of doing business. There are new markets for Pod Storage, for Solid Apps which work for the user, for App stores, for data trusts, and so on. The Intention Economy is just one, empowering individuals in their choice of vendor. They also have control over who they collabotae with, who they excercise with, who their share medical data with and so on. Different important areas of their new freedom, which also have positive effects on the economy.
In a world in which users, creatives and organizations are fed up with the assumption that advertizing is the only way to make money on the web, the Intention Economy offers a much more healthy alternative model. It is a vision in which buyers will tell the market what they want to buy, and vendors will compete to provide it. The Solid project is a huge step towards this vision, by providing individuals with the tools to manage their own data, and to control who has access to it. When people ask what new business models will be enabled by Solid, one answer is that it will enable the Intention Economy.