The Rise of Corporate Science in AI: Data as a Strategic Resource

Digitalization has vastly increased the availability, the use, and the value of data. We show that this has implications also in the context of innovation, specifically, for basic research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Whereas corporations in recent decades have generally shifted away from scientific research, this has not been the case in the field of AI. In AI, we show that a number of large corporations including Google, Facebook, and their Chinese counterparts hire leading researchers and publish increasing amounts of high-quality basic research. Conventional explanations of corporate science fail to fully explain why corporations would undertake this research and disseminate their results. We suggest that a central aspect of digitalization—the rising importance of data as a strategic resource—drives corporate participation in AI science and publication. Owning strategic data resources makes firms lead users of AI tools, gives them a novel comparative advantage over universities in doing research in AI, and constitutes a specialized complementary asset that facilitates value appropriation. We conclude that the phenomenon we observe reflects an overall shift in the sources of competitive advantage in AI, from exclusivity in technology to exclusivity in data.