Coping with the Double-Edged Sword of Data Sharing in Ecosystems

Abstract

Researchers and practitioners agree upon the huge potential of Big Data Analytics (BDA) for firms' competitive advantage. Capitalizing on Big Data (BD) often requires sharing firms' data with their stakeholders in an ecosystem. Sharing data, however, is a double-edged sword, because firms might also risk losing their competitive advantage by doing so. This conceptual paper uses extant literature on data analytics to introduce a comprehensive data sharing strategy framework that helps firms decide which data can be shared in an ecosystem, which should be kept secret, or if additional rules and regulations are required for sharing the data. The framework combines two distinct categorizations of data, and it relates the data categories to firms' strategic competitive advantage by employing the Resource-Based View (RBV). Firstly, the framework is grounded in the stages of the data analytics process and secondly, it distinguishes between operative, strategic and monetizable data, a new categorization introduced by this paper. Depending on the categories of data a company intends to share, the framework recommends five distinct data sharing strategies that help mitigating the risk of losing their competitive advantage.