Data as Strategic Resource

The elevation of data to the status of a strategic resource represents one of the most consequential theoretical developments in contemporary management research. Yet the analytical vocabulary available for understanding data as a competitive asset remains underdeveloped relative to the economic significance that data has acquired in practice. Traditional frameworks for analyzing strategic resources, most prominently the resource-based view (Barney, 1991) and its extensions into dynamic capabilities theory (Teece et al., 1997), were constructed around the properties of physical and human assets: tangibility, scarcity, and the capacity for exclusive ownership. Data possesses none of these properties in their conventional forms, and its behavior as a competitive asset differs from that of traditional resources in ways that require systematic theoretical attention. This chapter develops a framework for understanding data as a strategic resource in AI-driven organizations. It proceeds through five analytical moves. First, it examines the distinctive properties of data as an economic good, identifying the features that differentiate it from the resources for which existing frameworks were designed. Second, it traces the value trajectory of data from raw input to strategic asset, arguing that value is not intrinsic to data but emerges from the combination of data with complementary capabilities. Third, it examines the governance challenges associated with data as a strategic resource, including ownership dilemmas, privacy constraints, and the organizational mechanisms through which data value can be appropriated. Fourth, it analyzes data network effects as a mechanism of competitive advantage, with particular attention to the conditions under which data advantages are self-reinforcing and those under which they are contestable. Fifth, it situates data strategy within the broader ecosystem architectures examined in Chap. 2 , arguing that data advantage in the contemporary competitive environment is fundamentally relational and not merely positional.