MIT Sloan Management Review Article on The Data Boom Is Here - It's Just Not Evenly Distributed

Joseph Schumpeter was deeply worried about innovation. The renowned economist, who coined the term creative destruction, championed entrepreneurship as the engine of economic growth but feared that small players lacked the key resource needed to implement their pathbreaking ideas: capital. Fortunately, he turned out to be wrong. Since the 1950s, a thriving ecosystem of angel investors and venture capitalists has supplied enough money to startups for their ideas to change the world.

But the data age has revived Schumpeter’s concern that innovators could be blocked from accessing the resources they need. As Big Tech becomes evermore powerful thanks to the vast troves of data that the major platforms have collected, and innovation becomes increasingly data-driven, entrepreneurs and enterprises may find it difficult to seize new opportunities. Keeping the engine of innovation running will require access not only to capital but to data as well.

About the Author

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is professor of internet governance and regulation at the University of Oxford.

Thomas Ramge has authored more than 15 books about technology, innovation, and decision-making. They are coauthors of the new book Access Rules: Freeing Data From Big Tech for a Better Future (University of California Press, 2022).