Data Sharing in Innovations Available to Purchase

Many innovations today are data-driven, ranging from self driving cars to advanced medical diagnostic tools. The success of data-driven products critically depends on their access to big data. To improve the algorithms of these products, firms make substantial investments in data collection. However, for an individual firm, the accumulation of useful data can be slow, limiting the benefits of the algorithms. Therefore, a key challenge facing governments and policy makers is how to promote data sharing among individual firms. In this monograph, we first discuss unique challenges of data collection and data sharing in innovations, using the autonomous vehicle industry as an example. Then we present findings based on one of our recent research studies that seeks to understand the efficacy of a recent data sharing initiative.