MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Level Up to Strategic Data Sharing

Most organizations have learned how to share data tactically. They’ve put technical infrastructure and processes in place so that they can easily transfer data when necessary to comply with regulations, execute transactions, or provide a service. But far fewer companies have begun to explore the opportunities created by a more strategic approach to data sharing.

In today’s digital economy, business leaders need a data-sharing strategy to pursue novel digital solutions — and move in new business directions. Strategic data-sharing practices allow an organization to share data quickly and with control for specific opportunities with specific partners, and to share it repeatedly, with an emphasis on value creation. As strategic data-sharing practices mature over time, purposeful, fast, and creative data sharing becomes the basis for business model innovation and the resulting payoffs.

About the Author

Barbara H. Wixom is principal research scientist at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR). Ina M. Sebastian is a research scientist at MIT CISR. Robert W. Gregory is an associate professor of business technology at Miami Herbert Business School. Gabriele Piccoli is a professor and the Edward G. Schlieder Endowed Chair of Information Sciences at Louisiana State University’s E.J. Ourso College of Business, and associate professor of information systems at the University of Pavia.

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