With Zipcar, Robin Chase turned the concept of car-sharing -- and carbon-saving while you're at it -- into a reality and even a full-blown trend. Nowadays, the MIT-trained entrepreneur is still transforming the ways we drive.
Why you should listen to her:
If she weren't a proven start-up entrepreneur, you might imagine Robin Chase as a transportation geek, some dedicated civil servant, endlessly refining computer models of freeway traffic. Or if she weren't such a green-conscious problem-solver, you might take her for a businesswoman only. Ultimately, the best way to understand Chase is simply as a remarkable innovator.
Case in point: In 2000, Chase focused her MIT business training on founding Zipcar, now the largest car-sharing business in the world. Using a wireless key system and Internet billing, members pick up Zipcars at myriad locations anytime they want one. The idea is at once ordinary and highly sophisticated, with powerful technologies applied to tasks as prosaic as grocery shopping. But the result couldn't be more straightforward: fewer cars, less carbon.
Since its founding, Zipcar has doubled in size every year, making Chase's biggest ideas and her latest company, GoLoco, look mighty promising.
"Robin Chase has already changed the way we drive, but she's not satisfied. Now she wants to change the way we live as well."Harvard Gazette
Blog Posts on TED
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Zipcar and beyond: Robin Chase on TED.com – January 31, 2008
Robin Chase rose to fame by founding Zipcar, the world's biggest car-sharing business, but that was one of her smaller ideas. In this presentation she travels much farther, contemplating road-pricing schemes that will shake up our driving habits and a no-fee mesh network as sprawling as the United States Interstate highway system. But how could you build a free wireless system that vast and pervasive? Chase finds the answer in a few short lines from The Graduate. And it has nothing to do with plastic. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 13:39.)
Watch Robin Chase's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Robin Chase on TED.com.
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