Designing Digital Infrastructures for Industrial Data Ecosystems - A Literature Review

Data ecosystems are driven by political and market demands but face strong barriers that require their own socio-technical infrastructure for their realization. In particular, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has distinct characteristics and requirements for software-based IIoT data ecosystem infrastructures to facilitate inter-organizational, trusted data sharing and value creation. However, the design and purposeful management of infrastructures are challenging, as they emerge organically. To identify opportunities and foundations for design knowledge contributions, this study assesses in a structured literature review a total of 415 papers about digital infrastructures for their applicability to data ecosystem settings considering data as main asset, data sovereignty, trust, and common value propositions. The findings suggest that industrial data ecosystems and digital infrastructure research are so far not connected, despite some implicit overlaps exist. Therefore, a research agenda is presented as well as a concept matrix with the main findings from existing infrastructural research.