Entrepreneurship Through Open Data: An Opportunity for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Entrepreneurship and open data are key elements in the sustainable development field, improving economic, social, and environmental dimensions. However, entrepreneurship and open data are barely studied together in the literature from a theoretical perspective. Therefore, this study identifies the main themes in the previous studies and proposes a conceptual model for analyzing entrepreneurship through open data. For this purpose, a descriptive analysis and a co-word analysis were performed. Results show that the subject is multidisciplinary, and the main theme of study is how different agents reuse information released by public administrations to generate new entrepreneurial initiatives, especially novel business models associated with new mobile applications. Open data sources, innovation, and business models are studied as critical factors for analyzing entrepreneurship through open data. Likewise, a conceptual model is presented and emerging themes for future research are proposed. Among them, the importance of encouraging collaboration between different agents in the open data ecosystem for service development and improvement is emphasized. Our study identifies an emerging theme that is still in an early phase: The study of sustainable entrepreneurship through open data as a value creation initiative to address global sustainable development.