Kevin Kelly has a great post on his blog, "The Technium" with thought-provoking notions about ownership, renting, and borrowing as they relate to both goods and services in both the physical world and online. Here is a great quote:

“The downside to the traditional rental business is the “rival” nature of physical goods. Rival means that there is a zero-sum game; only one rival prevails. If I am renting your boat, no one else can. If I rent a bag to you, I cannot rent the same bag to another. To scale your rental business you have to buy more boats or bags. But of course, intangible goods and services don’t work this way. They are “non-rival” which means you can rent the same movie to as many people who want to rent it this hour. Sharing intangibles scales magnificently. This ability to share on a large scale without diminishing the satisfaction of the individual renter is transformative. The total cost of use drops precipitously (shared by millions instead of one). Suddenly, ownership is not so important. Why own, when you get the same utility from renting, leasing, licensing, sharing?”

These notions bring into focus some innovative ideas for designing new services.

Kevin is a terrific writer, and a very smart guy with great insights on a wide array of topics. I also highly recommend his "Cool Tools " weekly email with tips on all sorts of things (bits and bytes) to make life easier or more interesting. You can subscribe here .