Co-utility: Conciliating Individual Freedom and Common Good in the Crowd Based Business Model

Abstract

We analyze the application of the notion of co utility, a new concept describing self-enforcing and mutually beneficial interactions among self-interested agents, to the crowd based business model. Based on the definition of co-utility amenable games, we show that the crowd sourcing market is naturally co-utile without additional incentives. Furthermore, we analyze the equity crowd funding industry and propose solutions that can neutralize the fear and mistrust effects underlying its market in order to make it strictly co-utile.