Industrial Open Data: Case Studies of Early Open Data Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Open data entrepreneurship is required to create novel services and sustainable value networks based on government released datasets. However, the business is still in its infancy. This paper investigates the emerging open data value network structure based on empirical findings from 14 Finnish organizations. The data was collected through interviews of early adopter open data entrepreneurs during the spring of 2012. We identified business models such as: saving costs with co-creation, creating new user interfaces by combining data from several sources, and analyzing and visualizing data. Understanding the business models, as well as the emerging OD value network, will help companies to better reap the benefits of open data, while contributing to academic discussion on how to establish an open data service ecosystem.