Sharing Strategies for the Connected World
Firms employ innovative strategies for sharing financial, informational, and capital assets. While sharing has always been at the heart of strategic management, the proliferation of sharing-enabling technologies and the corresponding sharing business models give rise to unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Five of the ten largest publicly traded companies either employ a sharing business model or develop sharing technologies while the previously gigantic energy firms have lost their central position. Firms employing sharing strategies call into question the viability of traditional service business models. Innovative shared-risk initiatives such as crowd funding, and the sharing of ideas through open innovation and purpose-based innovation communities, further challenge our conception of funding, innovating and organizing. The conference created an arena for sharing new and innovative conceptions of innovation and entrepreneurship, intra-firm organizing and inter-firm arrangements. As Norway has been implementing an unequivocal, comprehensive and prosperous sharing strategy, and was rated the ‘best place to live’ for the 12th year in a row by the UN Human Development Index, it was an excellent backdrop for us to explore strategic management facets of the sharing economy.
