Angela Dettori

Revitalizing the Barter: The Case of Sardex.Net

“Creativity without boundaries” could be the best expression to describe the activity of an enterprise which was founded a few years ago in Sardinia (Italy). Its concept is a rediscovery of barter, the ancient practice to obtain goods from other people. The basic rules of barter rest unmodified nowadays: networked firms produce/sell goods or services and exchange them with goods and services provided by other firms in the network. Starting from the awareness that about barter firms has been written little, the goal of this article is to analyze this concept in order to show how information and communication technologies create new ways to make business. Our aim is in particular to understand, through the case study of Sardex.net, how this firm works, and how it improves thanks to the Internet the performance of the networked firms. We try moreover to find out whether and how the tourism is involved.