Italianway: An Entrepreneurial Innovation for Hospitality in Contemporary Cities

This chapter is devoted to a specific case of sharing economy in Milan, broadening the vision to include the influence that infrastructuring processes have not only on the complex socio-technical system (scale-up) but also on a single case at local level (scale-down), supporting the authors in a reflection of the impact of the sharing economy on management innovation. We describe Italianway, a Milanese platform that links visitors with the local communities and services to offer an authentic experience of the city; in the creators’ words: “Live like a local, welcome to Milan”. This chapter illustrates the favourable factors of the wider contemporary scenario on local economic growth, enabling the introduction of innovative solutions into a traditional economic system through the hybridisation of the sharing economy approach with and within a given milieu.