Business Models for Open Data Ecosystem: Challenges and Motivations for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Open data provide many opportunities for businesses, such as the development of new products and services. A significant challenge for businesses and governments is the collaboration among actors who provide data, actors who consume data and actors who create new services and applications around the data. These actors synthesize a collaborative environment-called ecosystem. Open data ecosystems face many obstacles and researchers have focused their interest in establishing and validating them. The existing knowledge about the open data ecosystem from the business perspective is limited. The purpose of this study is to examine the actors of open data ecosystem and their relationships, their motivations in order to increase entrepreneurial activities as well as the business model elements which are required in open data based business. 6 interviews were carried out with actors from open data ecosystem so as to receive up-to-date information directly from actors and estimated how the current ecosystem enables new business opportunities for actors providing data and for actors utilizing data. The analysis of findings is based on the Business Model Canvas and results are presented according to the perspective of each actor of the ecosystem. Findings show that although actors are highly interested in using open data, there is a need for a new kind of business ecosystem that makes a win-win condition possible for all the actors in the open data ecosystem. The interviews disclosed many motives and benefits of the open data ecosystem. Nevertheless, there are also barriers that should be carefully examined and resolved.