75

Dominated by a few actors, the electricity sector has long been very stable. Today, it is facing significant disruption as a result of two political decisions : the liberalization of the sector and the signing of the Kyoto protocol. Surprisingly, the sector is also experiencing the emergence of a new paradigm : that of the sharing economy. The sharing economy is historically unknown in the sector where its appearance seemed rather unlikely. This article traces the emergence and ascension of this paradigm in the Netherlands from the 1980s to nowadays. A business model perspective is adopted. The business model describes how firms create, deliver and capture value. This article shows that the transformation is not a technical one but rather a managerial one with the development of new ways of organizing the production of electricity. It also shows that the sector went from a situation where a small number of isolated initiatives were present to one where an ecosystem was created around sharing activities with many actors present. These actors sometimes compete with each other but, more often, they are complementary to one another. The article goes on to discuss the various forms that the sharing economy takes in the electricity sector and the ways that firms, through their business models, facilitated the emergence and development of this paradigm. Finally, this article criticizes the use of the business model as an instrument to analyse the evolution of a sector.