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#1. Nevermined is rocket fuel for data sharing 

Data sharing

3 min read

This is the first in a series of articles called “Nevermined: Big Data. Small effort”, meant to outline the current challenges companies face in handling data and the very simple, but highly effective solutions offered by Nevermined, a cutting-edge data sharing blockchain technology.

Photo by Danny SwellChasers on Unsplash

People often ask us why we started Nevermined. The answer is simple: because organizations are missing huge opportunities to create real value with their data. And we know this from first-hand experience. Some of our founders spent years in corporate environments, being amazed (and yes, mildly frustrated) by data strategies that didn’t unlock data’s real value.

That’s why we exist.

DATA IS LIKE WATER

See, data is not really the new oil or the new gold. We’d say it’s more like water…you absolutely need it to survive, and the more you have, the more powerful it becomes. It’s the same with data.

In order to get real insights and create real value for your organization, you need lots and lots of data. Let’s be honest: it’s 2021, so data strategies that don’t go beyond using an email address and one transactional data point to build a customer profile no longer cut it.

However, this is where we encounter a major issue — most organizations don’t have enough data on their own. And yet organizations need to remain competitive, even while being leapfrogged by data-native companies.

Imagine you’re Ford. Or BMW. Or any other ‘traditional’ car company. You’re amazed by the fact that investors are putting huge valuations on a company like Tesla. The main reason for that is it has collected data from the billions of miles their cars have driven. So if the future of mobility is in self-driving vehicles, Tesla will have the data to train its algorithms on. Tesla is valuable because, at the very core, it is a data company.

Ford, BMW and the legacy car companies score pretty low as a data company. So it’s nearly impossible for them to compete in that field.

Unless they share data.

3 TRILLION IS A LOT OF MONEY

It’s clear that real value will come from connecting and sharing data. It will enable new and better insights, new products, even new companies.

Think telcos that combine their geo-data with financial data from a bank. Or imagine car companies pooling together their vehicle data in order to train their algorithms.

McKinsey says that connecting data across institutional and geographic boundaries will add roughly $3 trillion annually in economic value. That’s about 3% of global GDP…not too shabby. But the key is that value is derived “across institutional and geographic boundaries”.

Because the reality is that sharing data is hard.

The challenges around data sharing can be summed up in these 3 areas.

  • Lack of access
    Sure, you can come up with innovative use cases based on 3rd party data sets. But data more often than not sits in silos. And silos are meant to keep people out.
    Problem: you don’t know where to find relevant data. And if you do, you can’t access it.
  • Regulation
    Sure, you can agree to share data. But moving or copying data, internally or to a 3rd party data service, comes with considerable risk. There’s not just GDPR and government regulation, but also security issues.
    Problem: data sharing inside or outside your organization creates significant regulatory (and logistical) problems.
  • Governance
    Sure, you can agree to share data. But getting two or more parties to agree on terms, conditions, standards and all kinds of legalities is slow, analog, cumbersome and therefore expensive.
    Problem: the governance side of setting up data partnerships is a bottleneck for data sharing.

It’s these challenges that make us excited about Nevermined.

This is why we started Nevermined.

Because Nevermined makes it easy to share data in a secure, trusted and governed way. And giving organizations these capabilities is rocket fuel for their capacity to create new value streams.

Get in touch, book a demo!

On our next article we will dig into new value creation streams and the 3 ways in which organizations can leverage Nevermined in developing data strategies that will MAKE them money, rather than COST them money. We’ll be covering how to utilize your data to build new and better products or businesses and get direct monetization.

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