Sharing economy platforms: creating shared value at a business ecosystem level

Sharing Economy Platforms (SEPs) are, in general, easily challenged by social ethics and culture, and are vulnerable to social and institutional uncertainties. Drawing from the Creating Shared Value (CSV) concept (Porter and Kramer, 2011), this article investigates whether CSV activities assist SEPs in retaining sustainable innovation at a business ecosystem level. Based on the Polanyian embeddedness framework, we specifically examine how SEPs’ CSV co-evolves and aligns with virtue ethics and local culture across three growth stages: Community stage, Scaling-up stage, and Legitimation stage. Data for this research were collected from multiple case studies from two major sectors: the bike-sharing platform sector and the ride-sharing platform sector. Our findings indicate that SEPs should co-create shared values by embedding virtue ethics and local culture into their work with key ecosystem partners in order to preserve sustainable innovation. The research contributes to an evolving understanding of CSV activities in the sharing economy literature on SEPs, as well as proposing some practical implications for industrial practitioners and policymakers.