Globally, the economically most successful public companies over the past decade are almost exclusively companies whose business models are based on good data governance, innovative data use, and innovations in data storage, anonymization, or monetarization. These moneymaking success stories include, of course, the US tech companies from Silicon Valley, China's tech companies, but also supposedly more traditional companies such as Walmart, Hershey, Coca Cola, the agricultural machinery manufacturer John Deere, or Starbucks. 

There is no sign that this trend is slowing down. 

In fact, their smart data governance has put Alphabet Inc. and other “data core companies” in a unique position where data governance no longer costs but earns money. These companies can easily diversify their businesses so quickly and so widely with the use of smart data analytics that they are unlikely to ever be disrupted; they occupy a position where they can choose from the best data engineering talent in the world and move the needle on innovative technologies that will always outrun legislation (e.g. synthetic data). For example, Alphabet Inc. can put their resources to the famous search engine, to making autonomous cars, industrial robots, or pharmaceutical research due to their data governance capacity. 

Notably, no European company is among these top data innovators.  

Over the past 2 years, the European Commission has been trying to force companies in the EU to push for more innovative data governance and usage with a series of legislative proposals, such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the forthcoming Data Act (DA), the Data Governance Act (DGA), and the forthcoming AI Act (AIA). But the ever-growing number of legislative acronyms is complex and has yet to realize its promise, as Prof. Anne Paschke, Sarah Rachut, Alex Engler and in the coming weeks many others will debate in the Data Capital 101 series on this website. 

Some member states, like Germany, have drafted their own national data strategies and spent millions of Euros to incentivize their core industries, such as the automotive industry, to share and use their data. Surveys by the European Commission or by European industry associations such as bitkom, show that businesses in Europe have theoretically understood the value of smart data governance.

However, the success of all of this is slow at best—and I say that as one of the authors of the German data strategy and as a firm believer that the race for European digital sovereignty is not yet lost. 

So, for the next weeks, while on sabbatical at Yale University as a World Fellow, I am going on a fact-finding journey on both sides of the Atlantic. The goal is to find out, apart from regulation, what economic incentives might induce companies to set up smart data governance and innovative data use? How can we actually measure the impact of good data governance on a company’s economic success? What structural changes in corporate governance are potentially necessary? What barriers exist, either in the mindset of managers or in regulation? What is so different in European companies when it comes to innovative data governance? Finally, is the American data dream really what it seems? 

In a series of interviews with CEOs, practitioners, academics, and other experts on both sides of the Atlantic I hope to find some clues to these questions and will publish them on my blog and, for those who want to dive in deeper, in a newsletter. In addition, my team and I will publish more resources for business and policy leaders on the topic. 

This is not a strictly scientific project. I do not have the aspiration to resolve a conundrum that is puzzling to even the most renowned academic experts, such as Prof. Monika Schnitzer, Prof. Henning Kagermann from the acatech managed Zukunftsrat, or Yale University’s Prof. Fiona Scott Morton, who all kindly contributed to this project. A puzzle that is a daily challenge to practitioners like Christoph Wegner from BASF Digital, Wolfgang Hauner from Allianz, Kent Walker from Google, Frederic Sutter from Airbus, or Manuel Atug from Chaos Computer Club, to name only a few of the experts who will get their say on this blog.

But I think that with their help it is possible to pose the right questions, come to a solid problem analysis, and—most importantly!—at the end of my sabbatical to offer a repository of resources on the latest technologies and propose solutions to a new network of practitioners, and thus possibly to gauge next steps for entrepreneurs and business leaders.