Andreas Hutterer, Barbara Krumay and Manuel Mühlburger (JKU Business School, Institute for Business Informatics - Information Engineering) presented their research entitled "What Constitutes a Data space? Conceptual Clarity beyond Technical Aspects, öffnet eine externe URL, opens an external URL" at the 29th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) in Panama, to shed light on the elusive concept of Data Spaces. The paper received a nomination for the Best Paper Award.

The paper investigates at the components of Data Spaces, a concept that aims to unlock the maximum potential of data. Against a backdrop of divergent interpretations of the term, her work represents a significant step forward in untangling the complexity and introducing fundamental features that define the concept of Data Spaces.

Abstract:

In the data economy, data has become an essential strategic resource for gaining a competitive advantage. Data spaces represent a relatively new phenomenon aimed at encouraging businesses to fully leverage the potential of data. Despite various approaches for definitions there remains a lack of clarity surrounding the conceptualization of data space, its perceived value, and the factors that drive its adoption. The conceptual ambiguity and synonymous usage of the term in academic and business literature present significant obstacles to targeted conceptualization and use. This paper addresses these issues by proposing primary properties of data space and contributes to the field by applying a semantic decomposition. Through this approach, we identified data space as having the following conceptual aspects Nature, Element, Function, Utility and Governance. These primitives highlight the growing need for security and privacy when sharing interorganizational data. In addition, we offer an initial definition of data spaces.