Effectiveness of Data Trust Mechanisms in Enabling Cross-Firm Analytics: Focus on Privacy, Commercial Incentives, and Governance

Abstract

The digital economy is increasingly characterized by the need for collaboration and data sharing across organizational boundaries. Cross-firm analytics, the practice of conducting joint data analyses between firms, holds immense potential for generating insights that drive innovation, efficiency, and competitive advantage. However, such collaboration is fraught with challenges related to privacy, commercial incentives, and governance. Traditional data sharing approaches often expose firms to regulatory, ethical, and competitive risks, particularly in the era of heightened data protection concerns and evolving artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities (Slattery et al., 2024; Lee et al., 2023).