The value of data version 45445

February 11, 2008

As I have mentioned before, I often do stuff with the Talks with Talis podcasts playing in the background. In one of them, Jamie Taylor from Metaweb talks at length about Freebase. Something he said while discussing data as intellectual property (all data on Freebase is public)

It is the services that you deliver around data that is of value. That is where the value lies

He went on to talk about companies/organizations needing to analyze their data assets within the appropriate context. Most data is only contextual, and does not differentiate you from the market, nor is it your core value. Needless to say, I couldn’t agree more. Different people look at that data with different contexts, thus deriving types of value. While this is not universally true (some data must be kept hidden, but that’s a small and shrinking amount), by having data in the open more people and organizations derive greater value, i.e. the overall value pool actually increases. For scientific data that’s especially true. Can you imagine where we’d be today without access to all the publicly available datasets that all life scientists use routinely without even thinking twice? The value comes from the questions being asked and the additional data being generated within the companies which brings that public data to life.

Aside: Is it sad that one of the best arguments for open science and interoperability comes from a non-scientist?

Technorati Tags: Freebase, Open Data