Don’t miss out on discovering new data-driven business models with ecosystem design

2023-05-30

You know the phrase: if it’s free, then you are the product? Well, that is not entirely true. Sometimes you make the payment and still become the product. That’s the limitation of the current data capitalism: data is so valuable that companies hesitate to share it with others. However, the right incentives could allow data to do more good. Ecosystem design can help disrupt the status quo and establish new, cooperative business models.

Generative AI is hot because it combines data sources

If all data were open, we would have one giant data pool. When someone restricts access to data, it gets siloed. That’s great for sensitive or critical information. In all other types of data, their value is wasted in isolation. That can happen involuntarily when companies are not used to thinking outside their core business. The more troublesome aspect is the mindset to purposefully lock access to non-critical data.

Smart ring manufacturer Oura recently released an article on men’s and women’s sleeping patterns. They make a nice comparison based on user-collected data from nearly two million nights of sleep. Sure, it’s anonymized, but the data appears to be harvested purely for private commercialization.

Is it cool that businesses have exclusive access to your data? How easy is it to export personal data and give it to, for example, scientific research or another platform? These are fundamental issues in our data economy because they inherently lead to the type of silos that need breaking.

The AI gold rush is a prime example of what can be achieved when data sets come together. Disregarding the problems with current data scraping methods for a moment, we can see that the actual value lies in teaching AI with basically all the data available on the Internet.

Incentivizing businesses to cross-share data

Generally, when two companies realize they need a shared data pool or joint business model, they normally set up an intermediary as a neutral third party that handles the data traffic. That’s natural. If I’m asking you to place your data into my database, how can you ensure that I haven’t tampered with anything or simply cut your access and run away with the results? You can’t – unless the technology itself is a neutral playground. That is a core use case for blockchains, which can be governed by a non-central player and track every change in the data set. But technology itself isn’t going to drive change. Change requires the right incentivization.

Identifying stakeholders’ needs, values and incentives is integral to Web3. We use processes like ecosystem design to determine how businesses and other stakeholders can be incentivized to contribute actively to create value. It is also an excellent tool for identifying internal data silos and their value when combined with assets from other companies.

How do I begin identifying shareable data silos?

Firstly, there is no need to immediately give an open invitation and hope for the best. Instead, you can take smaller steps in identifying your company’s data silos.

Hackathons are a popular way of asking contestants to “do something” with a given data set. The findings depend largely on the participant profiles, having an exciting challenge, a motivating prize pool and sending good coaches for the teams. In the end, results can be hit-or-miss. Another approach is to adopt a “neverending hackathon” attitude and invite online communities to create new value with your assets.

However, it’s likely your company already has the knowledge to produce similar or even better results. But you also need a high-level strategy and a roadmap to find collective use for your data. To fill in the blanks, you should find answers to the following:

• What data assets does my company produce?
• What data do we collect?
• What data are we missing?
• What data assets are produced in our existing ecosystem of vendors and customers?
• Where are they stored, and are they connected with other data sets?
• Who else could benefit from this data?
• What type of data would benefit us the most?

And eventually, you will end up defining your own data ecosystem.