Navigating the future of car sharing: how anticipation shaped the strategic development of MyWheels as a niche platform
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2025-08-28
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nl
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This thesis investigates how anticipation has shaped the development of the Dutch car-sharing platform MyWheels and its responses to regime pressures within the broader transition towards sustainable mobility. The research focuses on the internal development of a platform over time and how it strategically adapts to a changing environment. Central to this analysis is the concept of anticipation: the way in which actors use expectations about the future to guide decisions in the present. Using an innovation biography approach, the historical trajectory of MyWheels is reconstructed from its grassroots origins in 1993 to its current role as one of the largest car-sharing platforms in the Netherlands. The development of MyWheels is examined through the lens of the multi-level perspective (MLP) and anticipation theory (anticipation for the future (AfF) and anticipation for emergence (AfE)). By tracing how anticipation for the future and anticipation for emergence shaped five different strategic responses, the thesis demonstrates that anticipation is not static but changes in function as niche actors scale and professionalize. This analysis advances anticipation research by offering one of the first empirical studies to show how different anticipatory logics co-exist and interact within an organizational trajectory.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen