Data Sovereign Humans and the Information Economy: Towards Design Principles for Human Centric B2C Data Ecosystems

Abstract

The ever-growing amounts of data offer companies many opportunities for data-driven-value generation which, in turn, can be multiplied by leveraging data across company boundaries in evolving data ecosystems. However, while such systems increasingly emerge in B2B environments enabling systematic sharing and utilization of “industrial data”, comparable concepts in B2C ambits have not yet prevailed. Despite the rising importance of personal data in the information economy, B2C data ecosystems represent a widely unexplored research area. To remedy this gap, the study generates design principles for human centric B2C data ecosystems to aid in their development. For this purpose, a qualitative interview study with experts of interdisciplinary domains and a structured literature review are conducted both embedded into a methodology for generating design principles. On this basis, derived design principles help to understand peculiarities of data ecosystems in B2C ambits and provide solutions to overcome their obstacles identified in the empirical investigation.