The sharing economy has burst forcefully onto the scene in a wide range productive sectors (transport, tourism, finance, etc.). This collaborative approach is proving itself to be efficient in terms of business management, while also offering opportunities for citizens to exchange values (providing them with greater autonomy) and in many cases reducing their ecological footprint. Despite these virtues being hard to dispute, a critical and constructive inspection must be carried out to see whether sharing economy companies are also helping to change society's values, or if they are simply making capitalism more efficient. In the analysis for this article, a) we differentiate between the wide variety of actors in the sharing economy according to their purpose; and b) we present three avenues of exploration in which interest has been growing over the past year (the Sharing Business Model Compass, platform cooperativism, and Commons Collaborative Economies). Now is a critical moment if we are to guide the evolution of the sharing economy towards reaching its full potential. This is a complex matter that should not and indeed cannot be simplified.

All forms of social organization that have existed throughout human history have satisfied human needs in diferent ways. That is, they have given different answers to the three basic questions considered by Economics: "what to produce?", "how to produce it?" and "for whom to produce it?" The only trait that all forms of social organization have in common is their consideration of enterprises as the basic unit of production for goods and services.

Therefore, the way decisions are made in firms – the power game forever determining which interests are given priority over others – is key to understanding how the three above-mentioned questions are resolved. As such, faced with various proposals calling for an enconomy that prioritizes people over capital, we need to consider alternative ways in which business can operate.

In light of the above, this paper reviews the wide range of business models that criticize or question the principal of investor-owned firms, ie organizations whose main goal is not to make a profit whatever the cost. The paper provides an overview and comparison detailing the origins of such business models, which include co-operatives, labour-managed firms, B Corps, and Economy for the common good.