Sharing economy firms are disrupting traditional industries across the globe. Evidence of this phenomenon for example are: Airbnb which can boast a higher valuation than the Hyatt hotel chain, Uber has currently higher valuation than traditional car rental as Hertz and AVIS.
Beyond individual firms, there are now thousand cities across four continents where people can share cars. The global sharing economy market was valued at $26 billion in 2013 and some predict it will grow to become a $ 200 billion revenue market in the coming years. The revenue flowing through the sharing economy directly into people’s wallets will growth by 25%, according to Forbes. The business model – where peers can offer and purchase goods and services from each other through an online platform – continues to be applied to new industries from car sharing to peer-to-peer fashion, among many others. Regulation is often the most significant barrier to future growth for sharing economy firms. The sharing economy is a new concept and many regulators are unfamiliar with the business model. As a result they are often skeptical and assume sharing economy firms are trying to make a profit by avoiding the regulations ‘traditional’ industries (i.e., taxis) face. Many sharing economy business models do raise legitimate concerns about user safety,
The answer lies in the civil society, which consists of nonprofit organizations that attend to the things in life we make and share as a community. In dollar terms, the world of nonprofits is a powerful force. Nonprofit revenues grew at a robust rate of 41 percent — after adjusting for inflation — from 2000 to 2010, more than doubling the growth of gross domestic product, which increased by 16.4 percent during the same period. In 2012, the nonprofit sector in the United States accounted for 5.5 percent of