MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Why the Data Marketplaces of the Future Will Sell Insights, Not Data

Data is recognized as a business asset, but we lack efficient ways to price it, says MIT professor Munther Dahleh. He proposes a marketplace that bases the cost of data on the financial value it generates.

As director of MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), Munther Dahleh oversees multiple research projects that use AI and data science to tackle challenges in energy, finance, health care, and urban environments. He views data as an important asset across many domains, including business, but argues that we’re lacking sound ways to verify data’s value.

Dahleh, who is also the William A. Coolidge Professor for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, says the technology for a better data marketplace is already under development. The IDSS is creating a cloud-based “Data Lab” that will store data sets securely and offer data processing services to individuals who want to make use of those data sets. This same Data Lab architecture can be used for future commercial data marketplaces, Dahleh says.

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