When culture meets digital platforms: value creation and stakeholders’ alignment in big data use

ABSTRACT

Research on big data has highlighted that a crucial element to create value from data is the capability of aligning different stakeholders’ interests. However, it has not yet been investigated empirically how this process of alignment can be realized. We conduct a multiple case study on the two leading platforms involved in the online dissemination of cultural heritage – Europeana and Google Arts & Culture. Our findings reveal that a platform overtakes a rival one when it turns on multiple drivers of value creation in such a way that the drivers contribute to realigning the interests expressed by the stakeholders whose strategic objectives and beliefs were formerly divergent – or simply unrelated – to each other. This capability of realigning different stakeholders’ interests is independent of the level of industry-specific knowledge that the platform orchestrator has. The dynamics we document imply that Google has assumed a system integration role in the cultural ecosystem. This generates new trade-offs for museums in the way they generate value for the tourism industry. The paper enriches our understanding of what strategies digital platforms adopt to create value in big data contexts and provides a base to continue the investigation on other ecosystems driven by big data.

KEYWORDS:

• Value creation
• big data
• digitization
• digital transformation
• digital platforms
• stakeholders’ interests
• Google Arts & Culture
• Europeana

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Giorgia Abeltino, James Davis and Valeria Gasparotti (Google Cultural Institute), Conxa Rodà (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya), Jacqueline Duerinck and Martijn Pronk (Van Gogh Museum), and Eike Schmidt and Marzia Faietti (Uffizi Gallery) for their valuable input. We would also like to show our gratitude to Ian Brunswick and Danny Browne (Science Gallery Dublin), Chiara Bernasconi (MoMA), Christian Greco, Samanta Isaia, Paola Matossi L’Orsa and Enrico Ferraris (Museo Egizio), Marcela Sabino (Museu do Amanhã), Carlotta Margarone (Palazzo Madama) and Eva degli Innocenti (Museo Nazionale Archeologico di Taranto) for sharing their pearls of wisdom with us during the course of this research. We also extend special thanks to guest editors and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions which were critical to the development of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Danilo Pesce http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3405-8396

Paolo Neirotti http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2669-7072

Emilio Paolucci http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1249-8179

Additional information

Funding

This work has been partially supported by ‘Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca’ Award ‘TESUN-83486178370409 finanziamento dipartimenti di eccellenza CAP. 1694 TIT. 232 ART. 6’.