Sharing economy is an emerging concept in the field of business and economics in recent years that presents the emergence of new business opportunities and generation of ideas based on information and communication technologies (Gansky, 2010; Botsman and Rogers, 2010). In this sense, aspects such as trust, cooperation, a greater redistribution of wealth among the participants, the search for social justice in commercial exchanges... are associated with this economic proposal. So, it is often linked to the term "social", which could causes the inclusion of sharing economy in the same umbrella that other concepts as social economy.
However, facing the current dialogue around the term "collaborative economy", social economy is shown as a more settled economic term, with well-defined characteristics, and whose entities based their economic activity on principles and values such as those aspects proposed above, with added nuances.
The objective of this article is to satisfy this conceptual gap in two terms: firstly, to make a theoretical and descriptive approach to the essential notions linked to both terms, and secondly, to raise the common points and differences between the two concepts. So, the article seeks the establishment of bridges between two areas that allow to take advantage of the opportunities and to establish the strengths presented by each of them.
For the conceptualization of the sharing economy, we use the existing literature and the debate forums on these topics in order to contextualize the term, reviewing their economic role and the economic theories that support it. For reviewing social economy, we are based on the seminal references, due to it is a more widespread and institutionalized concept.
In a third section, we look for common places between the two terms in order to study their complementarity. In this sense, there are three main aspects on which we base this comparison: first, the social and governance area; secondly, the conditions for obtaining a social-transforming character; and finally, the development of a platform cooperativism as a concretion of the mix between collaborative economy and social economy.
So, the article allows to observe clear points of connection that allow them to develop to a greater extent the potentialities they have: on the one hand, this approach allows social economy to extend the scope of the activities carried out by the organizations grouped on it, like social enterprises; on the other hand, it allows sharing economy to visualize the positive externalities generated. In fact, social economy gives meaning to the economic activity carried out by projects in the sharing economy, which, although they do not have to use the legal forms associated with the social economy, they may be considered as social enterprises.
In conclusion, although both terms (sharing and social economy) show a different tradition (social enterprise emerging from historical association and linked to social innovation; and sharing economy introducing novel business models, from the development of the internet and the ICT), the article presents a theoretical approach to both and established the main characteristics that identify them, as well as the existing debates within them.
2. Social innovation and social entrepreneurship
