About this item
Sharing isn't new. Giving someone a ride, having a guest in your spare room, running errands for someone, participating in a supper club -- these are not revolutionary concepts. What is new, in the "sharing economy," is that you are not helping a friend for free; you are providing these services to a stranger for money. In this book, Arun Sundararajan, an expert on the sharing economy, explains the transition to what he describes as "crowd-based capitalism" -- a new way of organizing economic activity that may supplant the traditional corporate-centered model. As peer-to-peer commercial exchange blurs the lines between the personal and the professional, how will the economy, government regulation, what it means to have a job, and our social fabric be affected?Drawing on extensive research and numerous real-world examples -- including Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, Etsy, TaskRabbit, France's BlaBlaCar, China's Didi Kuaidi, and India's Ola, Sundararajan explains the basics of crowd-based capitalism.
About the Author
I'm a professor at New York University. I'm fascinated by how digital technologies shape the economy and transform our lives, a fascination that began when I was 13 and got my first computer.
I really enjoy writing. "The Sharing Economy" is my first book. However, I've written about 50 scientific papers, over 25 op-eds, and a variety of other articles and posts. I ran a student newspaper when I was a senior in college. (I also used to dabble in writing humor and satire. If you search the Web really well, you might find some examples. I'm not promising you'll like what you find.)
I often talk to tech companies about issues of strategy and regulation, and sometimes advise non-tech companies on how to deal with digital change. I also try to help federal, state and city governments think through policy issues related to digital disruption. There's plenty of that on the horizon.
I live in Greenwich Village. I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else. I travel a lot, mostly to talk to interesting groups of people. I like quiet beaches. I teach in five different NYU Stern executive education programs through the year, in the US, Europe and Asia, primarily about digital strategy. (One day, I'll teach a course on a quiet beach.) I also teach our MBA students about about digital entrepreneurship and our undergraduates about networks, crowds and markets.
You can find out more about my work at http://oz.stern.nyu.edu/
