The junior researchers of platforms2share actively participated in this year’s International Workshop on the Sharing Economy (IWSE) taking place in Mannheim, June 28th and 29th, 2018.

Both days started with plenary talks, introducing the participants to different perspectives on the Sharing Economy. In the first morning, the i-share project presented their results on the current state of the Sharing Economy in Germany. In second morning, Dr. Yair Friedman (Tel Aviv University and WEconomize) and Dr. Zafrir Bloch (The Tel Aviv - Jaffa Academic College and WEconomize) presented results from two research projects looking at sharing in Israel. After the plenary sessions, the participants split up into parallel sessions with different disciplinary focuses.

Members of platforms2share participated in various sessions and presented their research projects. 

Jonas Pentzien introduced a framework for understanding how exactly politics influence the emergence of digital platforms and the markets they create – a first step in understanding the dynamics of state-market-relations within the digital platform economy. Michael Jäger offered an approach to the question of how to investigate the sustainability of new business models in the sharing economy looking at the ecological impact and scope of platforms. From an economic perspective, Clara Wolff introduced her agent-based simulation approach for analyzing the socio-economic impact of organizational and data-related ownership models in the platform economy. Tino Schöllhorn offered an insight into his research agenda looking at how the Blockchain-Technology diffuses and becomes knowledge. And Dominika Wruk presented the interdisciplinary research framework and agenda of platforms2share. In the session on platform cooperativism, she raised the group’s overarching research question if the sharing economy can be transformed sustainably through decentralization.

The 5th IWSE was characterized by vivid and productive feedback sessions. The community of more than 100 researchers from 15 countries was warmly welcomed by the hosts. The research community was active in exchanging and connecting ideas as well as consolidating the international research network on the Sharing Economy.