2. Context of the International Data Spaces

Data-Driven Business Ecosystems

Novel digital products and services often emerge in business ecosystems, which organizations enter to jointly fulfill the needs of customers better than they can do on their own. In such ecosystems, which emerge and dissolve much faster than traditional value creating networks, the partners have a clear focus on end-to-end customer processes in order to jointly develop innovative products and services. Actors in such ecosystems can be businesses (also direct competitors), research organizations, intermediaries (electronic marketplaces, for example), governmental agencies, and customers.

Ecosystems are characterized by the fact that no member is capable of creating innovation on its own. Instead, the ecosystem as a whole needs to team up. In other words: Every member has to contribute something for the benefit of all. Ideally, ecosystems function in an equilibrium state of mutual benefits for all members.

A data-driven business ecosystem is an ecosystem in which data is the strategic resource used by the members to jointly create innovative value offerings. Key to success is to share and jointly maintain data within such an ecosystem, as end-to-end customer process support can only be achieved if the partners team up and jointly utilize their data resource (as shown by a number of examples in the Figure below).

Data Sharing in Ecosystems

Figure 2.1: Data Sharing in Ecosystems