3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
Meanwhile, six million students are currently enrolled in free Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs) that operate at near zero marginal cost and are taught by some of the most
distinguished professors in the world, and receiving college credit, forcing universities to
rethink their costly business model.
Source: Benita Matofska (2015) What we Know about the Global Sharing Economy, Compare and Share,
March 2015, http://www.thepeoplewhoshare.com/reports/
While many traditional industries suffered, the zero marginal cost phenomenon also gave rise
to a spate of new entrepreneurial enterprises including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and
YouTube, and thousands of other Internet companies, who reaped profits by creating new
applications and establishing the networks that allow the Sharing Economy to flourish.
Economists acknowledge the powerful impact zero marginal cost has had on the information
goods industries, but until recently, have argued that it would not pass across the firewall of the
virtual world into the brick-and-mortar economy of energy, and physical goods and services.
That firewall has now been breached.
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