The Emergence of Open Data in Business

Discuss about the EJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government.

Business innovations have characterized the modern corporate world which has rapidly increased because of the recent advancement in technology. Information plays a very vital role in business development and provides a full scope of the business from the business products, strategies and their interaction with their customers as well as the development of the plan. The emergence of big data and computing technologies has strengthened the growing need for business information made available to various users (Kitchin, 2014, p. 40). Most business has adopted innovation strategies and product diversification portfolio as a channel to increase the business competitiveness globally. The rise of open data in business development has revolutionized most business operations with most businesses both small and large corporation recognizing the importance of public data policies in their organization or activities. Enterprises have therefore embraced these open data strategies or plans to create innovative business solutions and fill the existing market gaps (Zuiderwijk et al. 2014, p. 22). Such an approach or policy will not only help in generating income for the business but also will add value to the company through social, environmental and economic benefits. This essay, therefore, seeks to provide a literature review of how business innovations have increased as a result of open data strategies or policies in businesses. The literature review will also give an overview of business innovations through open data across different business sectors.

To provide an understanding of mobile computing technology, its development and contribution to the development of business opportunities and the impact it has on business.

The scope of the study will focus on the business innovation through open data. It will defining the project objective or what the project seeks to achieve while highlighting the specific areas of interest in understanding open data. It will then focus on the development of the literature review through understanding of the concept of mobile computing concept of the topic.

The concept of open data has continued to be embraced by many businesses and has been considered to be a new strategy of improving business innovations and contribute to increased income generation as well as exploiting the existing market gaps. Data or information is supposed to be one of the most valuable resources in businesses, and its value can be attributed to the number of things the data is committed to perform or achieve in any business enterprise (Barry & Bannister, 2014, p. 137). Data varies from one business to the other and also from one industry to the other and so does the user of the same information do. In business, data may be used for various purposes and may range from customer-related data, financial data, market data, product data, and technological data among other forms of data. The data may be casual, semi-technical or even technical data and therefore we may have occasional data users, semi-technical data users as well as professional data users. This means that for data to be considered desirable or useful, it will depend on the type of user to that information.

Open Data Policy and Business Innovations

Open data can be described as the information that is made available for anyone to access, use or even share. There are standard features of open data or specific characteristic features which can be used to show that indeed the data is free to access, use and share. Among those features is the ability to use freely and reuse the information or data. This means that the information can be obtained without any legal restriction and can be used for any purpose (Janssen & Zuiderwijk, 2014, p. 707). Secondly, open data is free to be distributed implying that the user of the information is free to distribute the data itself. It also means that the users are not allowed to disseminate the information; it is the information that should be able to spread itself to different users. Lastly, open data should be freely available and accessible on the internet without any authentication or approval requirements.

Most business has, therefore, embraced the strategy of open data or formulated open data policy to create more interaction opportunities for the company with their customers or even their potential investors. On the most successful businesses has been the Amazon Company that has experienced excellent business growth from their previous online retail activities to becoming suppliers of cloud computing information which has become core in every business (Davies & Perini, 2016, p. 12). Such a transformation can as a result of their management decided to change their existing policy and adopt an open data policy. A not only business that has approved the use of public data policy but most important the different government especially the UK government and states have considered to pursue open data policies as a critical driver to economic growth and business innovations.

Due to the existence of different users of open data, most companies have focused on developing open data of different formats to cater for the different users. The casual users are the ordinary people, and in the most case have no in-depth knowledge on the data, and therefore they tend to use the information as it is provided on the internet (Gurin, 2014, p. 8). Thus for the sake of these users companies have been able to develop or present the data in a human-friendly fashion on the internet. The semi-technical data users have a little or professional knowledge or even some technical skills to handle the data. They can, therefore, manipulate the information manually and draw some conclusions. The data should be presented in a human-friendly manner in a way that facilitates machine capabilities. The technical data users have excellent technical skills to handle large volumes of data, and therefore they require open data which is raw and pure to allow the machines to read and transform the data into different formats according to their requirements (Donker & van Loenen, 2016, p. 44). They can conduct more sophisticated analysis for various business functions. There is, therefore, a great need to develop data systems which will cater for the interest of these users and improve the efficiency of open data in enhancing business growth and innovations.

Business Innovations through Open Data across Different Business Sectors

The concept of open data began with the government initiatives through the G7 which proposed the need for the governments to allow or adopt open data policies in a move to spur economic growth and development. However, most governments and states have been reluctant in implementing these policies (Lindman et al. 2016, p. 56). Most recently now most of them are considering the plans as grand potential avenues for economic growth and development. This is because open data encourages excellent innovation and citizens in most cases have been struggling to receive the information they want because most government agencies or departments were found to publish different details from the actual expected data. Open data policies reduce the barriers to entry into businesses world and increase competition between the government corporate bodies and the private sector. Many governments have not yet complied with this decision, however; the UK has been n forefront to implement the policy in their economy (George et al. 2014, p. 324). Open data policies by most governments aimed to promote transparency and create efficiency in government operations and service delivery to its citizens.

The recent developments in adoption and implementation of open data have not only come to meet government objectives but have significantly improved the private sector as well as presenting a potential platform for innovation and increased business value. Open data allows different users to access to various information from internet sources about a company, products, the current business trends and also enable them to keep them updated with technological advancements. Open data has therefore acted as a significant catalyst to the entrepreneurial spirits (Schimmer et al. 2015, p. 27). Open data presents start-up opportunities and especially for the new digital age to develop new products and services through innovations. Open data has therefore provided critical business insights which have been utilized by not only small and middle-sized businesses but also a large corporation. Most business innovations come up as a result of experimenting business hypothesis or hypothesis testing. Successful hypothesis testing can only achieve a though information research to identify existing market gaps. The small-scale businesses or startups have been considered to be the most beneficiaries of open data with the UK public data institute providing that they account for 70% of the users while the large business enterprises account for 8%. Regarding industries, the information and communication sector has the highest percentage of 54 percent (Martin et al. 2013, p. 352). The communication and information sector has dramatically been impacted by technological advancements which have created the need for increased technical innovations and therefore has led to increased competition. The provision of open data has enabled the entrepreneurs in the sector to identify the existing gaps in the market.

Impact of Open Data on Business Growth and Innovations

Open data has been able to promote the development of business innovations by providing an opportunity for entrepreneurs to identify the current business patterns and opportunities faster compared to their competitors. Open data allows the entrepreneurs to access information from different internet sources and then analyze the information to make meaningful conclusions. Once they have examined the information, they can venture into developing the knowledge for the benefit of their businesses (Assunção et al. 2013, p. 13).  The success of the company will, however, be determined by the ability of the entrepreneurs or business to employ the use of practical data analysis tools. The patterns may be related to the product development where the entrepreneurs can get insights on the performance of the specific product in the market and determine whether to venture the same product line or should develop a new product that will rival the existing market.

The open data allows the businesses to learn about the performance of their products in the market by conducting product market analysis and also engaging in receiving feedback from their customers. Such an opportunity helps the company to enhance the qualities of their product in the market or change their product line by innovating new product which will bring competition to the industry (Martin et al. 2013, p. 306). The open data allows the businesses to conduct a comparative analysis of their products with those of their competitors and develop strategies to improve their competitive strategy or even create new products in the market.

It is also important to note that business transformation and innovation has been brought about by the ability of Open data to allow businesses run more efficiently and productively. This has been achieved through the creation of a feedback loop from the increased data sets available from internet sources, the market sources as well as the internal sources (Rehman et al. 2016, p. 922). The information can be analyzed and used to make a practical decision about business development. Open data policies have contributed significantly to spurring innovation in the business sector. It has led to the development of new products and services. Information is one of the most significant resources a company or business can possess. Through open data, the companies can identify market gaps regarding product line and venture into the development of a new product in a move to close the gap. This has been one of the most successful strategies in the service sector where entrepreneurs identify market gaps by doing research on consumer needs and developing new products to cater for the differences by providing solutions to their problems.

Conclusion

Open data provides essential customer insights by analyzing the consumer behaviors and trends. With high data analysis tools, businesses can use this information to their benefit in improving their marketing strategies for their products which in turn lead to increased sales. It may also be precious regarding helping the business make the right product decisions which are customer centered.  It has become the new business development strategy not only for the small-scale companies or the micro enterprises but also the vast business enterprise (Dawes et al. 2016, p. 21). Open data has enabled many businesses to reduce their operating costs such as the information collection costs, distribution cost and access to information costs. According to a report released by Deloitte on the open data as the new business innovation strategy, they identified Google as one of the businesses which have embraced the policy of free data by presenting its information and availing it to the public. They believe that this open access to information provides an excellent opportunity to generate a good return on investments.

Through open data, businesses have opened up to more business collaborations through efficiently partnering with different partners as well as company suppliers. Such a collaboration b leads to increase company or business resource base and increase the company productivity and innovative power. Through open data, businesses give data or information to their customers who end up helping the customers get the best deals from the company and ends up improving or building a business relationship with the customers which is essential for business development (Bertagnolli et al. 2017, p. 9). Open data facilitates the customer with an opportunity to engage more with the business and will feel free to participate with companies that are more open with their data. Such engagements will help the company or industry receive positive or negative feedback about company products which is helpful in making product development decisions. Open data policies will help the costumers compel most businesses to provide their company information and contribute to increased transparency.

Despite the recent developments and adoption of public data policies by various governments and businesses, the growth rates have significantly been low. Most companies are still using their traditional business models with the private sector embracing the open data policy more compared government institutions, departments or institution (Neumaier et al. 2017, p. 18). Most companies and businesses have therefore considered maintaining their privacy by not disclosing their business information to the public, the disclosure of the information is usually selective where the companies provide the information they find essential to the society but not what the public wants.

Any information that is digitalized or made available in the various digital forms is subject to manipulation, copying, data mining, matching or even being used for a range of business purposes. This has made many businesses consider the open data as invasive to their privacy. The internet has continued to experience significant cybersecurity issues which have caused many organizations. Most organizations and industry, therefore, fear to lose their information in the hands of unauthorized people (Zuiderwijk et al. 2014, p. 9). There is still a fear that open data exposes the company to the risk of competition from the company competitors as they will be in a position to understand the different strategies employed by the businesses to remain competitive in the market. Open data is faced with a significant challenge of collaboration between the players or the parties involved. These include the companies or businesses providing the information, the users of the information as well as the system developers who develop data systems. Lack of collaboration pushed by different interests of the parties has led to slow adoption and implementation of the policies globally.

Open data has, therefore, become the new business model in the modern corporate world with many businesses utilizing the new platform to increase business innovation of new products as well as services. Trade is believed to result from conceptualization of business ideas; information, therefore, serves as the foundation of any business since it brings out new ideas (Zuiderwijk et al. 2015, p. 432). Firms should, therefore, utilize open data model as a new business initiative aimed at improving the performance of the company regarding product development, customer engagement and service delivery. With the increased number of national governments adopting this policy and the new call by the international businesses to embrace the open data initiative, the expectation is that open data will transform activities and contribute to increased business innovations through new product development and service provision (Brunswicker et al. 2015, p. 1252). Identifying a new market niche as well as product diversification strategy will remain to be the essential factors to consider when adopting an open data policy or model in your business. However, developing security control measures will be a great venture and should not be seen as a strategy to limit access to open data but should be seen as an initiative to increase the quality of the information being made available on the internet and another website about business.

Conclusion

From the above literature review, open data has indeed become the new business model for much business and especially the micro-enterprises. The new model has opened great opportunities for business and entrepreneurs to increase their innovative powers and come up with new products and services in a bid to close the existing market gaps. However, we should understand that the success of the open data policy or model in business will depend on the ability of the company to utilize appropriate data analysis tools which will aid in the development of useful economic conclusions. Despite the rapid growth of the open data model as an excellent business innovation platform, there is a need to protect business s privacy by controlling or having security measures to control or limit the users from misusing the information for other malicious purposes as may have a negative impact on the businesses. The control, however, should be aimed at increasing the quality of open data and not limiting the access.

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