The Economic Value of Information


Book Description

The Scope of This Book Popular culture often refers to current times as the Information Age, classifying many of the technological, economic, and social changes of the past four deca:les under the rubric of the Information Revolution. But similar to the Iron Age be fore it, the description "Information Age" suggests the idea that information is a commodity in the marketplace, one that can be bought and sold as an item of value. When people seek to acquire information yet complain about information overload, and when organizations invest millions in information systems yet are unable to pinpoint the benefits, perhaps this reflects a difficulty with the as sessment of the value of this commodity relative to its cost, an inability to dis cern the useless from the useful from the wasteful. The Information Age requires us to assess the value, cost, and gain from information, and to do it from several different viewpoints. At the most elementary level is the individual who perceives a need for in formation-her current state of knowledge is insufficient and something needs to be understood, or clarified, or updated, or forecast. There is a universe of al ternative information sources from which to choose, some more informative than others, some more costly than others. The individual's problem is to evalu ate the alternatives and choose which sources to access. An organization comprising many information-seeking employees and agents must take a somewhat broader viewpoint.










Information Asymmetries and the Creation of Economic Value


Book Description

What do Darwin s theory of evolution and the second law of thermodynamics contribute to our understanding of the world in which we live? More than you think: the combination of both produces what is called a general systems theory of evolution. The second law of thermodynamics has been popularly formulated as: Systems that are left alone develop in a direction of increasing disorder . While buildings that are left alone develop into ruins, the reverse process requires the input of solid and skilled labor. On the other hand, evolution clearly proceeds in the direction of increased complexity. Ordered systems, such as human kind, evolved apparently spontaneously out of an initially unordered state. Information Asymmetries and the Creation of Economic Value has the challenging ambition of investigating the relationship between the former theories and the storage, processing and transfer of information to grasp the dynamics of economies, markets and industries, adding a practical side to the pure theory. This book develops a conceptually and mathematically consistent framework for existing concepts used in organizational economics. And it does so in a way accessible to readers that are not familiar with modeling approaches, overcoming the lack of consistency and accessibility that is common in econophysics and complementing, thus, existing approaches in the literature. An essential read for those that finally want to be able to understand and use evolutionary approaches to organizations, whether they are familiar with the subject or not. IOS Press is an international science, technical and medical publisher of high-quality books for academics, scientists, and professionals in all fields. Some of the areas we publish in: -Biomedicine -Oncology -Artificial intelligence -Databases and information systems -Maritime engineering -Nanotechnology -Geoengineering -All aspects of physics -E-governance -E-commerce -The knowledge economy -Urban studies -Arms control -Understanding and responding to terrorism -Medical informatics -Computer Sciences




The economic value of data in the 21st century


Book Description

Essay from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Market research, , language: English, abstract: This paper addresses the dimensions of data as a resource in the 21st century. Data - a term that is no longer unknown in today's age. Rather, they seem to be everywhere, data is collected everywhere in our everyday lives. From the supermarket around the corner to banks to doctor's visits, data is collected everywhere. With the help of new information technology, smartphones, wearables such as watches and other sensors, data collection is being given a whole new reach. Data is collected from the user everywhere and at all times. What is happening around us, where are we going, what time of day are we out and about, who or what are we spending our time with, all this is data that is collected in real time and then analysed. The business with this data is also no longer unknown. Big names like Google, Facebook and Amazon are common. To give a clue to the entire idea: Google is said to have about two trillion users a year. Facebook can boast 2.91 billion users in the third quarter of 2021 and Amazon has 548 million active customer accounts so far this year.




Infonomics


Book Description

Many senior executives talk about information as one of their most important assets, but few behave as if it is. They report to the board on the health of their workforce, their financials, their customers, and their partnerships, but rarely the health of their information assets. Corporations typically exhibit greater discipline in tracking and accounting for their office furniture than their data. Infonomics is the theory, study, and discipline of asserting economic significance to information. It strives to apply both economic and asset management principles and practices to the valuation, handling, and deployment of information assets. This book specifically shows: CEOs and business leaders how to more fully wield information as a corporate asset CIOs how to improve the flow and accessibility of information CFOs how to help their organizations measure the actual and latent value in their information assets. More directly, this book is for the burgeoning force of chief data officers (CDOs) and other information and analytics leaders in their valiant struggle to help their organizations become more infosavvy. Author Douglas Laney has spent years researching and developing Infonomics and advising organizations on the infinite opportunities to monetize, manage, and measure information. This book delivers a set of new ideas, frameworks, evidence, and even approaches adapted from other disciplines on how to administer, wield, and understand the value of information. Infonomics can help organizations not only to better develop, sell, and market their offerings, but to transform their organizations altogether. "Doug Laney masterfully weaves together a collection of great examples with a solid framework to guide readers on how to gain competitive advantage through what he labels "the unruly asset" – data. The framework is comprehensive, the advice practical and the success stories global and across industries and applications." Liz Rowe, Chief Data Officer, State of New Jersey "A must read for anybody who wants to survive in a data centric world." Shaun Adams, Head of Data Science, Betterbathrooms.com "Phenomenal! An absolute must read for data practitioners, business leaders and technology strategists. Doug's lucid style has a set a new standard in providing intelligible material in the field of information economics. His passion and knowledge on the subject exudes thru his literature and inspires individuals like me." Ruchi Rajasekhar, Principal Data Architect, MISO Energy "I highly recommend Infonomics to all aspiring analytics leaders. Doug Laney’s work gives readers a deeper understanding of how and why information should be monetized and managed as an enterprise asset. Laney’s assertion that accounting should recognize information as a capital asset is quite convincing and one I agree with. Infonomics enjoyably echoes that sentiment!" Matt Green, independent business analytics consultant, Atlanta area "If you care about the digital economy, and you should, read this book." Tanya Shuckhart, Analyst Relations Lead, IRI Worldwide




The Economic Value of Personal Data


Book Description

Three concepts related to information are often confused: the cost of production, the quantity and the value of information. If cost is generally proportional to the amount of information exchanged, there is seldom a direct link between the amount of information and its value. Consider two examples of smart, connected products involving highly sensitive personal data: home automation data and health data. Nest (acquired by Google in January 2014 for $ 3.2 billion) manufactures smart thermostats to control temperature in the different rooms of a home based on environmental parameters such as the number of people in each room. Withings started by selling smart scales but now also sells activity trackers, blood pressure indicators, smart watches, sleep monitors and surveillance cameras. These are information services that produce information through sensors and transmit them via the Internet of Things. The cost of installing these sensors is not very high. The amount of information to be communicated and stored on servers costs more. But none of these quantities is directly related to the value of information. Indeed, a single bit of information indicating with certainty that a fire is about to break out in your home while you are away has a much greater value than the gigabytes of data corresponding to daily variations in the number of people in every part of your home during years. Similarly, a single bit of information indicating with certainty that you are suffering from a rare disease has much more value than the hundreds of gigabytes corresponding to the measurements of your heart rate or the number of your daily steps over several years.The theory of information in economics experienced a sporadic development in the past five decades since the pioneering work of Jacob Marschak. The difficulty arises from to the early attempts to analyze information as a homogeneous good with a single market value. It is now clear that information is a differentiated economic good. In this short note, I review several important concepts: information as an economic good, information theory in economics and the willingness to pay for information, the market for personal information as an equilibrium between supply and demand for personal information.




Approaches and Processes for Managing the Economics of Information Systems


Book Description

"This book explores the value of information and its management by highlighting theoretical and empirical approaches in the economics of information systems, providing insight into how information systems can generate economic value for businesses and consumers"--Provided by publisher.




The Economics of Information Systems and Software


Book Description

The Economics of Information Systems and Software focuses on the economic aspects of information systems and software, including advertising, evaluation of information systems, and software maintenance. The book first elaborates on value and values, software business, and scientific information as an economic category. Discussions focus on information products and information services, special economic properties of information, culture and convergence, hardware and software products, materiality and consumption, technological progress, and software flexibility. The text then takes a look at advertising to finance software, perspectives on East-West relations in economics and information, and evaluation of information systems. Topics include research on information systems, knowledge on Eastern European information services, GDR information institutes, local databases, GDR databases, CMEA directions, and theoretical propositions. The manuscript reviews software reuse, software methodology in the harsh light of economics, quantitative aspects of software maintenance management, and calibrating a software cost-estimation model. Concerns cover the need for calibration, measuring maintainability, prognosis of maintenance effort, object-oriented programming, metaprogramming, and software quality and reuse. The text is a dependable reference for computer science experts and researchers wanting to explore further the economics of information systems and software.




The Value of Information


Book Description

The book examines applications in two disparate fields linked by the importance of valuing information: public health and space. Researchers in the health field have developed some of the most innovative methodologies for valuing information, used to help determine, for example, the value of diagnostics in informing patient treatment decisions. In the field of space, recent applications of value-of-information methods are critical for informing decisions on investment in satellites that collect data about air quality, fresh water supplies, climate and other natural and environmental resources affecting global health and quality of life.