Transforming Data into New B2B Business Opportunities

Purpose – Exploiting data is an increasingly important source of competitive advantage for companies. However, identifying the benefits of data utilization in new business creation may be difficult for B2B companies that are not familiar with the field and are only just establishing their data strategy. The main research question of this paper is: “What kind of different ways are there to transform data into new B2B business opportunities?” Design/methodology/approach – The data of the qualitative case study (Yin, 2003) was collected during 2017 - 2018 from 22 semi-structured theme interviews with seven different companies. The case companies were selected while they were in different stages of data strategy implementation (from beginners to advanced as data utilizers). The results of the interviews were discussed in three different workshops with company and researcher representatives.Originality/value – Current research about data utilization and strategies is often analytical in nature, focusing on e.g. algorithms and modelling techniques (Sivarajah et al., 2017). This paper describes practical benefits and presents six different ways to utilize data in new B2B business creation.Practical implications – The paper helps practitioners to benchmark other companies and to provide feedback to managers for establishing their data strategy and developing their data-driven business successfully in practice. It also helps researchers see the utilization of data in new business creation in a broader context including the B2B business and strategic decision-making viewpoints.