From “data silos” to “data sharing”: public data openness and enterprise ambidextrous innovation

Vollständiger Abstract

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Purpose This paper examines whether and how public data openness affects firms' ambidextrous innovation in China, distinguishing exploratory innovation from exploitative innovation. Design/methodology/approach Using the staggered rollout of municipal public data platforms as a quasi-natural experiment, this study estimates multi-period difference-in-differences models with Chinese listed firms from 2007 to 2023 and conducts robustness, instrumental-variable, channel, heterogeneity and platform-quality analyses. Findings Public data openness promotes both exploratory and exploitative innovation, with a stronger effect on exploitative innovation. Channel tests are consistent with lower institutional transaction costs, stronger entrepreneurship, higher information-search efficiency and improved operational efficiency. Heterogeneity tests show that internal governance and external oversight condition firms' ability to convert public data into innovation: institutional ownership strengthens both innovation effects, whereas internal control quality, analyst coverage and research report attention mainly reinforce exploitative innovation. The estimated coefficients are positive across platform-quality groups and are often larger for lower-quality platforms, whereas the continuous quality interaction terms are negative and statistically insignificant. The evidence does not establish a stable platform-quality gradient in the innovation effects of public data openness. Spillover tests show that within-industry peer policy exposure to public data openness is not significantly associated with exploitative innovation but is significantly negatively associated with exploratory innovation, suggesting a possible crowding-out effect on exploratory search. Originality/value This paper contributes to public-data-openness and innovation-management research by showing how public data openness reshapes the composition of firm innovation rather than only improving aggregate innovation performance. It further identifies policy channels and boundary conditions through which public data openness is converted into exploratory and exploitative innovation.