2020 Volume 4 Issue 1 Pages 103-123
Value creation with digital data receives much attention as a source of innovation as the digitization of industries and economic systems advances. Data exchange ecosystems have emerged to facilitate data exchange and trade among heterogeneous actors, including private firms, non-profit organizations, public sectors, and individuals. Although the importance of nurturing data exchange ecosystems is well recognized, there are limited studies on developing and designing such ecosystems since there are many complex problems that need to be solved, such as legal, policy, and technology issues. Moreover, little is known about mechanisms behind data exchange platforms including the characteristics of data and the relationships between data while many discussions on business and technological aspects of data exchange ecosystems exist. Therefore, this paper unpacks data exchange mechanisms by analyzing the data combination networks on a digital platform. Our network analysis identifies 1) the characteristics of highly linkable data, 2) the conditions that facilitate data combination, and 3) structural characteristics of data networks on a digital platform. The paper demonstrates that variables related to “time” and “place” in the data facilitate data combination between diverse datasets. The paper also shows that the mixture of sensitive and shareable data increases the likelihood of link between the data from different fields. Furthermore, the structural characteristics of the data network (locally dense and global sparse) indicate the possibility of combining diverse data by filling the structural holes of sparse networks. Implications for developing data exchange platforms and promoting the data economy are discussed based on the findings of the paper.
