How may entrepreneurs develop a new market in a disruptive sector like the sharing economy? What pays more, competitive, individual strategies or collaboration and with whom? To answer these questions, we study strategies in the market structuration of French crowdlending sector. Crowdlending platforms founders had to bypass a long-standing banking monopoly and regulatory capture. We highlight three strategies: 1) a risky competitive strategy through a regulatory niche strategy by one competitor to overcome the banking monopoly, 2) coopetition (ie combined advantages of cooperation and competition) among platforms and regulators to co-construct a regulatory framework for the market, 3) and an undercover strategy by a late mover who partnered with incumbent banks, and thus gained market leadership. We contribute to the literature by identifying several niche strategies and their contingencies, in the sharing economy, and by showing the intertwining of competitive and cooperative strategies in the structuration of highly fragmented markets.

Check all the forthcoming Research Seminars.

Héloïse Berkowitz has a Phd in management science from i3-CRG, Ecole Polytechnique. She graduated from HEC Paris, la Sorbonne and CEMS and was a visiting scholar at Columbia School of International Public Affairs and Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions. Her research deals with sustainable collective strategies and self-regulation devices in the energy sector. She is also interested in topics such as the performativity of strategy and social sciences, meta-organizations, sectoral governance, and specific interdisciplinary issues such as human rights and oceans’ management.