Outdated belief #6: The data is owned by the customer and we can’t monetize it

Digitalization is concerned with the three key enabling digital technologies software, data and artificial intelligence. These build on each other as it typically is software that generates the data from systems in the field and it’s this data (preferably labeled) that forms the basis for machine learning and deep learning. The software-intensive systems industry, as the name suggests, has fully embraced the role and importance of software and many companies are actively experimenting with and prototyping ML/DL models. Data, however, remains a highly controversial subject in most of the companies I work with.

The reason data is so controversial is twofold. First, most companies sell a product and the customer then becomes the legal owner of the product. That means that any data generated by that product is considered to automatically be owned by the customer as well. As a result, the data can’t be used by the product company unless the customer gives permission to use it. And most customers are quite restrictive in doing so and typically only allow this if it directly benefits them and it doesn’t benefit others.

The second reason is that the whole system of laws surrounding GDPR and privacy is, in most contexts, poorly understood. Following the “better safe than sorry” policy, most individuals in companies that are involved in data generation, processing, analytics and storing are extremely restrictive in what data they’ll work with and generally treat it as a toxic material rather than a valuable asset.