How external sharing data can supercharge your organisation

Sharing data across businesses clearly creates more valuable data and delivers a number of strategic benefits. Despite this, external data sharing is still new to many organisations. Some cite concerns about protecting their data, loss of related intellectual property (IP) and ensuring regulatory compliance. These risks can, however, be properly mitigated by making the right strategic, procedural and technological decisions prior to initiating a data sharing project, and by improving stakeholder understanding of regulatory and legal issues.

Understanding the benefits of data sharing

Developments in AI technology have helped create a variety of new, fast-emerging business models, based both on generative and narrow AI. In many areas, developers have reached an irreversible ‘AI singularity’ that has removed barriers to growth and transformation for businesses.

Data is the essential fuel for this AI revolution, and efforts to move beyond internal data sharing – to data sharing models that span wider ecosystems – are mounting. At a basic level, external data sharing enables compliance with regulations like the EU Data Act and with the forthcoming EU Digital Product Passports (DPPs).

However, the opportunities and benefits of data sharing go far beyond reactive compliance, delivering benefits on an economic and societal level that include:

• strengthened ecosystems stretching multiple businesses that are built on collective data, transparency, trust, and coordination through a single source of truth between partners and measurement of activities;
• enabling digital transformation of a business and new related use cases;
• the creation of more powerful AI models, with data providing deeper insights into customers and operations;
• greater organisational efficiency and new revenue streams;
• enabling a higher degree of supply chain transparency; and
• ·new opportunities around the green transition.

A recent study conducted by Arthur D. Little and the European Chemical Industry Council on the chemicals industry found that data-sharing platforms were among the four most commonly planned, or currently used, technologies. The study suggested that ‘big data’ use was expected to more than double in coming years.

A continually improving business model

As external data sharing matures, participants benefit from a ‘flywheel effect’. Organisations engaged in data-sharing and collaboration initiatives can continually improve their business models and build competitive advantages. This, in turn, has the beneficial effect of attracting more data and more partners, which leads to customer and revenue growth.

Co-written by Jeroen Schouten of Pinsent Masons.

Join expert speakers from Pinsent Masons and Arthur D. Little in Amsterdam on 10 October for a panel discussion and networking event on the benefits of data sharing.