ABSTRACT
The sharing economy draws attention to new forms of commerce, which, as we argue, call for a revised definition of entrepreneurship. In this chapter, we link the development of entrepreneurship to three types of commerce, electronic, social and sharing commerce, to understand an evolutionary development, yet also search for common and contrasting denominators of the sharing economy related to these types of commerce. The purpose of the chapter is to assess the impact of the sharing economy on how entrepreneurship has evolved. We systematically track the developments of the sharing economy vis-à-vis commerce using social media analytics. Our findings indicate how a revised definition of entrepreneurship would need to expand from non-social, non-digital, non-transfers of ownership, to social, digital exchanges, also pointing to how the sharing economy is represented across various types of commerce. The chapter contributes to previous literature by providing a systematic empirical account of the impact of the sharing economy on the evolution of entrepreneurship and conceptually explaining why the sharing economy gives rise to a relatively wide plethora of commerce initiatives and the need to expand the definition of entrepreneurship.
