Jackie Danicki

Dave Nicholson, inventor of Zopa

Originally uploaded by dynamist.

I don’t fall in love with business concepts very often, but I do love me some Zopa. Wazzat? Well, the company is like an eBay for money, where people who want to borrow can hook up with people who want to lend. But what does “Zopa” mean?

Zopa is a term taken from business theory. It stands for Zone of Possible Agreement and is the overlap between one person’s bottom line (the lowest they’re prepared to get for something) and another person’s top line (the most they’re prepared to give for something). It’s the way people negotiate all sorts of stuff - buying a car, getting a mortgage - even a teenager negotiating with parents about staying out late. If there’s no Zopa, there’s no deal.

Voluntary exchange (aka capitalism) is a beautiful, beautiful thing. When I met up with Zopa’s inventor, Dave Nicholson, yesterday for some cold drinks and to get berated for not yet setting a wedding date a long overdue catch-up, one of the topics we talked about was the great Radley handbag line. (One of us has bought a Radley, but it wasn’t me. And that’s all I’m saying about THAT.) I was reminded of this tonight when Antoine told me that, while walking to Scott Norvell’s house on Sunday afternoon, he and Perry couldn’t help but notice that Adriana and I were talking handbags while the two of them were discussing firearms.

“Another great example of why socialism is so absurd,” Antoine said. “I’d love to see a governmental five year plan for handbag production.”

As if I needed another reason to champion free markets…

*I think that “Zone of possible disagreement” would be an excellent tagline for this blog…

Filed under: Life