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Open data for competitive advantage: insights from open data use by companies

Published: 27 May 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Politicians have high expectations for commercial open data use. Yet, companies appear to challenge the assumption that open data can be used to create competitive advantage, since any company can access open data and since open data use requires scarce resources. In this paper we examine commercial open data use for creating competitive advantage from the perspective of Resource Based Theory (RBT) and Resource Dependency Theory (RDT). Based on insights from a scenario, interviews and a survey and from RBT and RDT as a reference theory, we derive seven propositions. Our study suggests that the generation of competitive advantage with open data requires a company to have in-house capabilities and resources for open data use. The actual creation of competitive advantage might not be simple. The propositions also draw attention to the accomplishment of unique benefits for a company through the combination of internal and external resources. Recommendations for further research include testing the propositions.

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                            dg.o '15: Proceedings of the 16th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
                            May 2015
                            369 pages
                            ISBN:9781450336000
                            DOI:10.1145/2757401
                            Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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                            • Arizona State University: Arizona State University

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                            Association for Computing Machinery

                            New York, NY, United States

                            Publication History

                            Published: 27 May 2015

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                            Author Tags

                            1. companies
                            2. competitive advantage
                            3. innovation
                            4. open data
                            5. resource based theory (RBT)
                            6. resource dependence theory (RDT)
                            7. resources

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                            • Research-article

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                            dg.o 2015
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                            • Arizona State University

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                            Cited By

                            View all
                            • (2025)Open DataEncyclopedia of Libraries, Librarianship, and Information Science10.1016/B978-0-323-95689-5.00058-4(434-439)Online publication date: 2025
                            • (2024)How top leaders’ support affects open government data (OGD)-driven innovation capacity of firms: Based on the TOE framework perspectiveJournal of Management & Organization10.1017/jmo.2023.68(1-17)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2024
                            • (2023)A Method to Screen, Assess, and Prepare Open Data for UseJournal of Data and Information Quality10.1145/360370815:4(1-25)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2023
                            • (2023)Enabling anonymized open-data linkage by authorized partiesJournal of Information Security and Applications10.1016/j.jisa.2023.10347874(103478)Online publication date: May-2023
                            • (2023)Unfolding the popularity of video conferencing apps – A privacy calculus perspectiveInternational Journal of Information Management10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2022.10256968(102569)Online publication date: Feb-2023
                            • (2023)Digital innovation and entrepreneurship transformation through open data hackathons: Design strategies for successful start-up settingsInternational Journal of Information Management10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2022.10247269(102472)Online publication date: Apr-2023
                            • (2023)The Relationship Between Open Data and CorruptionThe Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems10.1007/978-3-030-68127-2_43-1(1-15)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2023
                            • (2022)Bringing Digital Innovation Strategies and Entrepreneurship: The Business Model Canvas in Open Data Ecosystem and StartupsFuture Internet10.3390/fi1405012714:5(127)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2022
                            • (2021)Digital Entrepreneurship Services Evolution: Analysis of Quadruple and Quintuple Helix Innovation Models for Open Data EcosystemsSustainability10.3390/su13211218313:21(12183)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2021
                            • (2021)Mining Open Government Data for Business Intelligence Using Data Visualization: A Two-Industry Case StudyJournal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research10.3390/jtaer1604005916:4(1042-1065)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2021
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