{"id":140,"date":"2012-01-20T18:43:50","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T17:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bmchange.wordpress.com\/2012\/01\/20\/building-business-on-top-of-open-data\/"},"modified":"2012-01-20T18:43:50","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T17:43:50","slug":"building-business-on-top-of-open-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bm-change.nu\/?p=140","title":{"rendered":"Building business on top of Open Data"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image\"<\/a>Open Data is often linked to public sector information but it also covers private sector data that has been made publically available at (near) zero costs. For companies Open Data can be a commodity which, unlike minerals and oil, is available in unlimited quantities. Already companies generate revenues with products and services created with Open Data. The question is how they can keep their business sustainable when the suppliers of this data don\u2019t consider themselves suppliers. <\/p>\n

From agriculture to cultural heritage<\/h1>\n

Portals like data.gov.uk<\/a> or datamarket.com<\/a> provide access to hundreds of thousands different datasets, covering a broad range of topics such as agriculture, crime, economy or sports. Since governments decided that the way forward is to open up their archives. More recently, also businesses are investigating the potential benefits of publishing data that previously was considered confidential, often combined with crowd sourcing initiatives. And when stretching the definition of Open Data a bit further, also the mass amounts of data generated by the users of the various social media applications, can be considered Open Data as well.<\/p>\n

Framed photos and powder snow<\/h1>\n

Two examples of companies that have created business by making use of open data are Verse Sneeuw<\/a> (US: wePowder.com<\/a>) and Urban Photo Gallery<\/a>. Verse Sneeuw provides skiers and snowboard fanatics with detailed 5-day forecasts for the best places to ski. They base their forecasts on open data from various weather related sources like EUMetSat<\/a> and Yr.no<\/a> combined with a self developed prediction algorithm.<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Urban Photo Gallery has a more straightforward business model. Through their website they sell printed (high quality) and framed copies of photo\u2019s originating from various public archives. Public archives offer the photo\u2019s for a price based on marginal costs.<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nValue drivers<\/h1>\n

The project\u00a0 \u201cNederland opent Data\u201d <\/a>investigates how value can be created with Open Data. By analysing a small set of Open Data based services they derived the following list of value drivers:<\/p>\n