Digitalization fostering business cooperation – reality or fiction?

Abstract

The goal of the paper is to investigate if and how new technologies and digitalization foster the cooperation in business. To achieve that goal the authors first highlight the significance of the Internet for the growing presence of the cooperative process in the economy, then the concept of the sharing economy is explained and the main manifestations of the sharing economy – new business models, new models of economic organization, are characterized. The paper is more conceptual than empirical in nature. Nevertheless the authors combined the conceptual approach with the case study approach. The second was used to exemplify the new processes in business. It turns out that the new trends are accelerated by digitalization and new technologies and manifest themselves in the prevalence of cooperative elements in business. The business processes presented suggest interesting managerial implications for companies: innovative business models should be based on sharing, openness, transparency and crowdsourcing. Breakthrough technologies enrich and diversify opportunities for value creation by new forms of collaboration.