How Open Data can help startups succeed
Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry has released a whitepaper highlighting the challenges faced by the UAE startups and ways they can be addressed. The whitepaper, entitled "Validating a Startup Business Idea", was published in collaboration with Roland Berger, global strategy consulting firm.
The research found that 27 percent of the challenges faced by UAE startups were due to a lack market validation, i.e. need for the product or service in the market. This is also one of the major reasons why startups fail across the world.
46 percent of the surveyed entrepreneurs agreed to data availability remaining a key challenge.
From the in-depth research, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry has concluded that open data is needed to help startups in the country validate their business ideas and improve their competitive edge.
Market research data is key to understand the market better. Moreover, having open access to data can be of massive help to entrepreneurs when researching the market and formulating their business plan.
The whitepaper encourages government entities as well as private firms to make data available at a more micro level, as well as support startup entrepreneurs to utilise that data through education and training.
It also urged private and public entities to facilitate partnerships between startups and institutions to further support product testing and reaching the right market correctly.
Moreover, it also showed a correlation between a country's position on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index and its Open Data Index, which reflect a country's “start-up friendliness.”
Startups and entrepreneurs around the world rely on data to correctly estimate market validation. In fact, they not only rely on publicly available data, but also on government data they seek out.
Considering the fact that to judge the potential of any entrepreneur or even a startup, an investor would first want to know the market size and need for the new product or service being proposed, open data is critical to a startup's success. Hence, in order to help both entrepreneurs and investors, the data needs to be shared by the government as well as corporate entities.
However, considering that data is often expensive as the work requires in-depth research and analysis, it is seen as proprietary information that is a source of revenue to many corporate entities. How can the government and corporates find a balance in this scenario?
