According to Wikipedia, a business model “describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.” A Data Business Model is a business model where data is an indispensable component. If you remove the data, the business fails (or at least suffers greatly). To take one example, Amazon’s data is core to their business. Their historical transaction data helps them figure out how much inventory to hold and how to price products. Additionally, data about product views and purchases powers the recommendation engine, which drives a large portion of sales. Furthermore, product reviews drive traffic and SEO. As icing on the cake, all of this is a virtuous cycle: recommendations drive purchases, which result in more reviews, which lead to better SEO and more traffic, which results in more visitors and better recommendations. If Amazon wasn’t so effective as using data, it would be a much smaller company. The best part of data business models is that they often have the same kind of positive feedback loop as Amazon. In each business model, the more you use data to make money, the more data you get as a result, which helps you make more money in the future. … Data Business Model