Author's Note and Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Airbnb-Design Your World Right 7
Lyft-Hospitality in Transportation 9
The Rise of the On-Demand Workforce 10
BlaBlaCar-Global Infrastructure Built on Trust 12
The Melding of Commerce and Community 13
La Ruche Qui Dit Oui-Redefining Perfection 16
How to Read This Book 17
I Cause 21
1. The Sharing Economy, Market Economies, and Gift Economies 23
What Is the Sharing Economy? 26
How Key Early Thinking on the Sharing Economy Evolved 30
Is the Sharing Economy a Gift Economy? 35
The Sharing Economy Spans the Market-to-Gift Spectrum 38
Accommodation 38
Funding 41
Service Platforms 43
The Sharing Economy and Human Connectedness 44
2. Laying the Tracks: Digital and Socioeconomic Foundations 47
Precursors: eBay, Craigslist, Kozmo 48
Digital Determinants of the Sharing Economy 52
Three Fundamental Forces 52
The Consumerization of the Digital 54
The Digitization of the Physical 55
Decentralized Peer-to-Peer and the Blockchain 58
The Digitization of Trust 60
Socioeconomic Drivers of the Sharing Economy 65
3. Platforms: Under the Hood 69
Markets and Hierarchies 70
How Digital Technologies Reorganize Economic Activity 72
Are Platforms a New Firm-Market Hybrid? 77
Gansky's "Meshy-ness" Grid 79
Botsman's Four Quadrants 82
Owyang's Honeycomb 82
4. Blockchain Economies: The Crowd as the Market Maker 85
Understanding Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Exchange 87
Bitcoin 87
OpenBazaar and Smart Contracts 91
Decentralized Service Platforms 94
Value Creation and Capture in Decentralized Exchange 95
Attention, Search, and Discovery 96
Trust and Reputation 97
Logistics 98
Some Challenges and Opportunities 99
II Effect 103
5. The Economic Impacts of Crowd-Based Capitalism 105
The Trouble with GDP 109
Additional Measurement Challenges in the Digital Economy 111
Four Key Economic Effects 114
Altering Capital "Impact" 114
Economies of Scale and Local "Network Effects" 117
Increased Variety = Increased Consumption 121
The Democratization of Opportunity 123
A Deep Dive into Peer-to-Peer Rental Markets 125
6. The Shifting Landscape of Regulation and Consumer Protection 131
Why Regulation Still Matters 138
Information Asymmetry 139
Externalities 140
Blurring of Boundaries 141
The Evolution of Regulation: Trust, Institutions, and Brands 142
A Historical Example: The Maghribi Traders 142
Economic Institutions and Brand-Based Trust 144
Where the Sharing Economy Is Taking Regulation 146
Future Regulatory Models 150
Peer Regulation 151
Self-Regulatory Organizations 152
Data-Driven Delegation 155
7. The Future of Work: Challenges and Controversies 159
"Freelanceability," Off shoring, and Automation 162
Off shoring 162
The Second Machine Age 164
The New Digitally Enabled Workforce 167
New Marketplaces 167
New Generalists 171
Immediacy of Labor Supply 172
Task Economies 173
Invisible Work 175
8. The Future of Work: What Needs to Be Done 177
Independent Workers and Dependent Contractors 178
The New Social Safety Net 187
How Entrepreneurial Is Your Platform? 192
Incubation 192
Independence 194
Infrastructure 195
Sharing Ownership in the Sharing Economy 196
Data Darwinism 200
9. Concluding Thoughts 203
Notes 207
Index 229