Value Creation within AI-enabled Data Platforms

Abstract With digitalization, new type of firms—the so-called business platforms—emerged as a central hub in two-sided markets. As business platforms do not ‘produce’ products or services, they represent a new model of value creation that raises the question about the core nature of a firm in the twenty-first century, when ‘data is the new oil’. At the end of the twentieth century, the concept of ‘value chains, value shops and value networks’ represented the latest development about internal value creation in a firm, but lacked any discussion about information technology (IT) or even ‘data as raw material’. This digital approach to monetarize aggregated data sets as internal core function of a firm needs more clarification, as value creation ‘without production’ is a shift of paradigm. This article starts with the concept of ‘value chains, value shops and value networks’, extends this to current IT and includes business platforms within an integrated framework of internal value creation in a firm. Based on this framework and the current development of leading-edge artificial intelligence (AI), this framework is applied to forecast the development towards ‘AI-enabled data platforms’, which are not covered by traditional economic theories. This article calls for more research to clarify the impact of such data-based business models compared to production-based models.