Concluding our mini-series on sharing economy platform businesses, today we will apply a very wide lens on the potential impacts and opportunities of our innovations. Last time, we talked about positive and negative impacts and how we as innovator can take part in finding solutions rather than awaiting potentially heavy-handed regulations.

Today, we are going to cast an even wider view on potential social impacts. I am aiming to balance risks and opportunities. There are many on both sides. The critics see the large for-profit sharing economy platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb, as leading to a “dystopia, with increasingly powerful platforms facing disempowered workers” [“that deliver a latte in a rainstorm to the more fortunate ones”]. Optimistic observers spot utopian possibilities of a crowd- and trust-based economic system and the emergence of a “networked society of micro‐entrepreneurs”

Join me to see the arguments on both sides!