Like barbarians at the gate, sharing economy startups aspire to use their platform-based businesses to ravage traditional industries, steal shares of customers’ wallets and challenge established firms’ asset-heavy business models. Facing this onslaught, established firms must devise strategic responses that put them in a position to avoid being drowned by the sharing economy and, ideally, benefit from it. The sharing economy makes use of online platforms to market owners’ underused tangible or intangible assets that can be shared with non-owners. As a type of platformbased business, the sharing economy has bred a large number of new companies competing against conventional “pipeline” companies (those that succeed by optimizing the activities in their value chains).2 Digital platforms in the sharing economy serve as the focal point of ecosystems that bring together individuals and businesses with underused assets and those who need to rent the assets for a limited duration. Assets being shared via a platform include financial resources (LendingClub), spare time and cars (Uber), extra rooms and vacation homes (Airbnb), time and skills (TaskRabbit), workspace (WeWork) and heavy equipment (Yard Club).