Shaping a GAIA-X Data Ecosystem through Innovation Modeling

The European GAIA-X project aims to create an innovative open, transparent and secure data infrastructure for different domains like energy, agriculture, and mobility. Data providers and consumers from one domain are supposed to form a data ecosystem on this infrastructure. Developing a new GAIA-X ecosystem for a particular domain is challenging because the participants of the ecosystems develop new business models and specifications of novel services while refining the requirements on the GAIA-X infrastructure, which is currently under construction. There is a need for approaches that help the consortium of participants in this innovation exploration task, i.e. to handle the complexity and provide communication means on a right level of abstraction. The Innovation Modeling Grid (IMoG) is an innovation modeling methodology with well-defined procedures that can help understand the GAIA-X problem space and present the model concisely. We applied IMoG as an innovation modeling approach on a GAIA-X ecosystem focused on mobility. In this paper, we present our experiences gained during this study. We found that using IMoG led to a better understanding of the roles, services, and interfaces in a specific GAIA-X ecosystem