The Vision
As the OSDU™ Data Platform matures and adoption increases, organizations are interested in solving long-standing and new issues with innovative, commercial solutions built on top of the data platform.
The existing OSDU catalog offers an area where vendors can showcase their existing wares but lacks functionality for consumers to request solutions and products from vendors. The Innovation Marketplace closes this gap, delivering ecosystem innovation in the solution marketplace. The Innovation Marketplace is a mechanism to support upfront demand specification so the solution developer ecosystem can build solutions for known consumer needs. It is a small, dedicated team to help maintain alignment with The Open Group / OSDU Forum principles and within legal frameworks.
By facilitating the Innovation Marketplace through the OSDU Forum, this market square encourages safe adoption and drives healthy competition/innovation. The OSDU Forum is not becoming a software development house and will not, and must not, engage in commercial activity or conversations.
The objective of the Innovation Marketplace is to create a vibrant ‘marketplace’ for potential recipients or builders of OSDU-enabled solutions to share desired outcomes with the OSDU ecosystem allowing developers/providers to identify solution development opportunities knowing there is demand. The Innovation Marketplace hopes to make the overall pie bigger and facilitate entry for smaller players, resulting in better and faster solutions while feeding any required changes into the existing change process for the OSDU Data Platform.
The Process
Consumers can submit a request for publication to the Innovation Marketplace through the Aha! Portal. Submissions can range from problem statements to well-articulated specifications. Submitted requests are then reviewed by the Innovation Marketplace Triage Team. Review is not intended to limit innovation or requests but strives to ensure requests are appropriate for the OSDU area of use and in line with the anti-trust/pro-competitive guardrails. During the submission process, requesters can indicate if they wish further to refine the submission with other OSDU Forum members or publish directly to the Marketplace. Any changes needed to the OSDU Data Platform to facilitate these new solutions will be donated or communicated to the shared backlog.
Once the request is published to the Innovation Marketplace, all commercial negotiations happen outside the OSDU Forum.
The Innovation Marketplace is in its first iteration, we are interested in hearing all feedback as well as stories of both success and failure, so that the process can be improved. We encourage all to communicate their feedback to the OSDU Forum.
The triage team intends to meet monthly to review and progress any submissions while tracking metrics that will be reported quarterly. These cadences will be adjusted as needed, depending on the submissions received.
Getting Started
All OSDU Forum members are encouraged to participate, as vendors and/or consumers. Find our landing page here for requestors and here for providers.
Ian Buck represents ExxonMobil in the OSDU Forum; he participates in the Capability Maturation/Innovation Marketplace, Seismic Data Definition, and External Data Sources teams.
Ian Betts represents Shell in the OSDU Forum, holds an Operator seat on the OMC and leads the Capability Maturation team.
