Data Capital

Data Capital refers to the collective value of an enterprise's data, information, and knowledge as strategic assets. It encompasses structured and unstructured data, metadata, ontologies, models, and knowledge representations that drive value creation, decision-making, and competitive advantage.

To understand Data Capital in an EKG context, it helps to view the whole enterprise ecosystem (internal and external) as a Data Economy. Many people call this a Data Marketplace, but a Data Economy is a more ambitious view: a system of supply, demand, exchange, and incentives.

In a Data Economy:

• Supply side (publishers): Data publishers offer Data Products, often realized as Self-describing Datasets (SDDs).
• Demand side (consumers): Data consumers demand data for their Use Cases.

In the context of Enterprise Knowledge Graphs (EKG), Data Capital needs to be known, valued, leveraged and optimized. This means:

• Known: Publishers, Data Products, consumers, and Use Cases are discoverable, and their relationships are explicit.
• Valued: The value of data is assessed through fitness-for-purpose and reuse across use cases and organizational boundaries.
• Leveraged: Demand (use cases) is connected to supply (data products), enabling better insights, automation, and collaboration.
• Optimized: Quality, governance, interoperability, and incentives are improved to reduce friction and maximize value.

Data Capital complements Human Capital as a fundamental organizational asset. When connected through an EKG, the combination enables better decisions, innovation, and competitiveness.