Towards Digital Innovation: Stakeholder Interactions in Agricultural Data Ecosystem in Croatia

Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems 20(2), 190-209, 2022 TOWARDS DIGITAL INNOVATION: STAKEHOLDER INTERACTIONS IN AGRICULTURAL DATA ECOSYSTEM IN CROATIA* Larisa Hrustek1, **, Martina Tomičić Furjan1, Filip Varga2, 3, Alen Džidić2, Bastiaan van Loenen4 and Dragica Šalamon2 1 University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics Varaždin, Croatia 1 2 University of Zagreb, Faculty of Agriculture Zagreb, Croatia 1 3 Centre of Excellence for Biodiversity and Molecular Plant Breeding Zagreb, Croatia 1 4 Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment Delft, The Netherlands 1 DOI: 10.7906/indecs.20.2.10 Regular article Received: 17 January 2022. Accepted: 26 April 2022. ABSTRACT The successful adoption of digital innovations in agricultural production systems is based on the proactive participation of all stakeholders and represents an important step in establishing resilient agri-food chains and creating sustainable value. The key tool for the creation of sustainable value is integrating the nine aspects of the business process (cooperation; inclusion; financing; diversification; communication; policies; knowledge with entrepreneurship; and production) by re-using of open governmental and public endeavours data as well as by the contractual sharing. The objectives of this research are to identify stakeholders in the Croatian agricultural system, and to explore their roles and their potential for data supply and needs for data uptake. Open access repositories were queried to identify stakeholders. Direct observation methods and semi-structured conservational qualitative interviews were used for stakeholder characterisation and data flow detection. Stakeholder importance with respect to current data supply was analysed. Underdeveloped data flow relationships in the agricultural data ecosystem in Croatia could be built in a spontaneous process following the data opening of the Research and Consumer group of stakeholders and promoting data sharing initiatives of the early adopters in the Supplier group. In that way, data opening would be the driver of the effective cooperation creation required for sustainable value creation but also the adoption of the best management practices, sustainable solutions and digital development. KEY WORDS agriculture data ecosystem, open data, stakeholder analysis, sustainable value CLASSIFICATION JEL: O13, Q01, Q15, Q16 *This is the extended version of the abstract published in: Vujić, M. and Šalamon, D., eds.: Book of abstracts of the National Open Data Conference. University of Zagreb, Faculty of Traffic and Transport Sciences,*Zagreb, 2021. **Corresponding author, : ; +385 42 390828; **Faculty of Organisation and Informatics, Pavlinska 2, HR – 42 000 Varaždin, Croatia Towards digital innovation: stakeholder interactions in agricultural data ecosystem in Croatia INTRODUCTION The agricultural sector plays a significant role in global and regional development. However, despite its strategic importance, too little attention is still paid to building the key elements in creating value and establishing sustainable practices in business processes [1]. The key elements of strategic planning, decision-making, and management in complex systems such as agriculture are (i) using and integrating the emerging digital technologies; (ii) the circular approach and participation; (iii) transferring the knowledge and the appropriate policies into agricultural business process practices [1-6]. An approach that combines these key features improves the business performance [5] but also creates sustainable agricultural value [1]. The framework for sustainable value creation in the agricultural sector [1] focuses on activities creating value currently and in the future, and it includes maintaining the internal environment but also emphasizes simultaneous interaction with the external surrounding. Therefore, the integration of the following nine aspects: cooperation; inclusion; financing; diversification; communication; policies; knowledge with entrepreneurship; and production enables the creation of sustainable values. The key tool for the integration of these aspects is the data sharing (either as re-using of the open data or as contractual sharing), enabled by the effective data governance [7-14]. Sustainable data-based value creation is a common approach that allows different stakeholders to influence decisions at different governmental levels of a complex structure [2]. In this research, we focused the circular perspective of the agricultural data ecosystem on the cooperation of all stakeholders and investigated data sharing needs based on the key characteristics and role of individual stakeholders in the sector and their role in the supply and demand for data. Cooperation and collaboration between the stakeholders in the agricultural sector through engagement, motivation and capacity to act together enables economic opportunities and ensures equal access to information and resources. It also contributes to the promotion of best management practices, the ones crucial for sustainable development and promoting effective resource management [3-5, 14, 15-17]. However, despite the focus on joint planning and management in agricultural operations, at the moment the effective cooperation remains limited [2]. The reasons are the complexity of the agricultural system, the large number of stakeholders with different perspectives, interests, values and concerns regarding business processes [2] which operate in an ecosystem where data and information exchange is lacking or is decentralized [6]. The open data ecosystem is a concept developed by emerging governments to encourage sharing and reuse of data, and as such includes key components which are policies for legal context, standards for interoperability, and an access network available for all stakeholders in the ecosystem [18, 19]. Open data ecosystem performance can be observed through three types of output indicators, namely data supply, data governance and user characteristics [18]. Open governmental data is an important part of the agricultural data ecosystem, however, creating value in this sector requires also a significant portion of different contractual data sharing [14]. This research contributes to the usage and value elucidation of open and shared data in the agricultural data ecosystem by defining and prioritizing the stakeholders through queries of open source databases, by discovering the data needs based on the stakeholder groups and alliances as well as the assigning the level of influence for the data supply in this data rich sector. The revealing of the potential for the development of data supply, taking into account stakeholder relations, will enable the development of a more resilient and sustainable ecosystem for agricultural data sharing in Croatia. 191 L. Hrustek, M. Tomičić Furjan, F. Varga, A. Džidić, B. van Loenen, and (...truncated)