Digital business ecosystems in the sharing economy: co-evolution in the context of geographical expansion

While digital platform technologies enable generic offerings with immediate global outreach, it remains unclear why many digital sharing economy companies rarely realise these opportunities. This raises questions as to whether their geographic expansion may be affected by an inadequate engagement with stakeholders, potentially stifling successful growth and upscaling. By applying a digital business ecosystem perspective for examining geographic expansion of 27 sharing economy platforms, we identify three ideal expansion types that capture the specificities of the business ecosystem of platforms. We label them I am the ecosystem; I am my complex relationships with the ecosystem; I am my direct relationships with the ecosystem. We link these to the underlying critical distinctions related to the platform configuration, level of standardisation and dependency on place. We show how these define the kind of relationships which sharing economy companies seek with different ecosystem stakeholders and the activities they need to undertake to thrive in new geographies.