On September 24 and 25, 2015, about 60 executives from different enterprises and NGOs gathered at the IMD Lausanne to learn and discuss on the topic "Sharing Economy - A New Paradigm or Business as Usual?" in an event hosted by Prof. Dr. Albrecht Enders (IMD, Strategic Management) and Prof. Dr. Andreas König.
Against the pictorial backdrop of the Lake Geneva, the participants of the so-called Discovery Event spent the first day looking into theoretical concepts on discontinuous innovation. This was intended to provide participants with a tool to detect and manipulate developing paradigms, value creation and course of action. In the evening, first private experiences with the sharing economy were shared and discussed along some theoretical concepts.
On the second day participants could more fully immerse into the matter in a case study on Airbnb, in which they discussed the challenges to established players in the industry and their options for action. For this part, Prof. Dr. Andreas König invited his external doctoral candidates Julian Lehmann and Florian Weber, with whom he recently did research on this topic. In this session the participants had the opportunity to reenact the scientific work by interpreting original quotes and comparing their results with those of the research project.
Subsequently, Dr. Christian Grobe, co-founder and CEO of Zencap, described the sharing economy and particularly the concept of online marketplaces from a start-up perspective. Many participants were inspired by this shift in perspective from the established players to the new players.
The participants returned to their enterprises with a lot of new impressions and insights. Many participants even thought of specific actions they wanted to pursue in the next few days, ranging from rethinking their own understanding of service, reducing complexity and increasing their agility to engaging in more external cooperation.