Why Should I Share? Exploring Benefits of Open Data for Private Sector Organizations

Increasing competitive pressure and digitalization demand organizations to rethink their approaches to collaboration and innovation. By permitting organizational boundaries to become permeable, firms have started to allow the in- and outflow of knowledge to enable new forms of value creation. This also applies to data as a form of knowledge. Yet, firms still struggle to systematically evaluate the benefits of engaging in open data initiatives. Hence, a comprehensive and empirically grounded model is needed. Therefore, we apply an exploratory research approach by triangulating insights from a literature review, expert interviews, and multiple case studies to derive three clusters of benefit concepts: internal improvements, innovation driver, and visibility & participation. Our work contributes to a better understanding of open data and lays the foundation for quantitative empirical studies. For practitioners, we outline a novel path to extract value from data and, hence, call for additional investments into open data initiatives.