Your research creates data.
Your data can create even more.

Ideally from the start of your project.

Thinking about reusability early helps you keep your data structured, documented, and shareable — which saves time later and increases the scientific and economic value of your work.

When data is reusable, they become easier to

• connect your research with others’ work,

• attract collaborators,

• support future projects and grant proposals,

• make your results more visible and citable, and

• enable innovation and new services, applications, or business models
  

You’re not doing this for “innovation” — you’re doing it to strengthen the quality, reach, and longevity of your research and to position yourself to turn your data into long-term assets rather than one-time outputs.

You don’t need to found a company — and data-driven innovation doesn’t require entrepreneurship.

What it does offer is a way for your data to create value beyond your current project. That can mean:

• Collaborations: opening doors to new partners.
• Licensing or services: letting others build on your data under clear conditions.
• Shared infrastructures: contributing to platforms that strengthen scientific communities.
• Societal relevance: enabling your work to inform practice, applications, or education.

Data-driven innovation is about giving your research a longer life and broader reach.

Almost any kind of research data can gain new value when it is well-documented and reusable: experimental data, sensor measurements, images, simulations, survey data, or even metadata.

When your data follow FAIR principles, you can more easily:

• combine it with datasets from other fields
• build tools, models, or services on top of it
• collaborate with partners inside or outside academia.

Often, the potential lies not only in the dataset itself, but in seeing it from a new angle or connecting it with the right people.

Most likely, yes.

Even data collected for a specific purpose can lead to unexpected insights or new applications when revisited, combined, or shared.

The first step is simply making your data visible, reusable, and available for new collaborations. If you want to take it a step further, you can consider building a product, service or even a start-up.

Our workshops help you explore what kind of opportunities your data might unlock.

Get in touch with our Innovation Manager