Towards open data based business: Survey on usage of open data in digital services

Abstract

Now-a-days open data is in high demand worldwide due to the possibility of creating innovative digital services and applications around open data. This paper discusses the open data from the business perspective; about the status of information usage in companies and motivation, opportunities and obstacles that relate to the open data based business. We carried out 11 interviews with company representatives to receive up-to-date information directly from the industry and to study the status of the information usage in industry to estimate how far the current business is from the open data based business. It seems that open data enables new business opportunities for actors providing data and for actors consuming data but also requires a new kind of business ecosystem that enables a win-win situation for all the actors in the open data ecosystem. The interviewed companies were highly interested in utilising open data in their own business but were afraid of opening their own data. In addition, the open data is often understood to be data that the actors of a public sector provide to the actors of a private sector. Thus, though there is high interest in open data, a lot of work must still be done to enable open data based business. In the end of the paper there are assembled research topics to which the attention should be paid in the future.