Big Data as Capital. A Case Study on the Innovation Labs Tech Accelerator

We are currently living in an economy driven by data as a form of capital and by increasingly diverse, emerging data accumulation methods. Based on a case study of Innovation Labs, a tech accelerator implemented in Romania since 2013, we discuss the challenges and opportunities for cultivating innovation and entrepreneurship competences that are sensitive to the potential and limitations of big data. Data capitalism has significant implications not only in our everyday life and business, but also on the instruments that we employ to understand the world and to achieve value. The data-based society needs complex information technology to process information, to observe, to map, to extract, to put together streams of data which eventually are leading to decision making and to value creation, including - but not limited to - financial value. Big data applications gather data from heterogeneous activity fields and seek to create insights through their cross-sectional interpretation. How are young tech-oriented people equipped to navigate the data-storm that this global current of digitalization and automation is creating? We will look at the case of Innovation Labs tech accelerator, by analyzing the last four editions of the program in terms of working with (big) data.