APC Forum: Poised between 'a wild west of predictive analytics' and 'an analytics of things westworld frontier'

The convergence of advancements in big data, analytics, the Internet of Things, digital transformation and artificial intelligence will transition organizations from their current wild west of predictive analytics to an environment that begins to resemble the American science fiction domain of Westworld. In this new domain, referred to here as an era of the 'Analytics of Things,' (AoT) business to business relationships will change dramatically and dynamically. New types of data and analytics contracts will be needed, and academic research on preferred negotiation strategies to realize preferred contract scenarios is required. This collaborative effort with the SIM Advanced Practices Council establishes early thought leadership for the emerging Analytics of Things. Findings from this research provide recommendations on contract provisions in different scenarios, and they inform AoT ecosystem partners on issues including, 1) infrastructure capacity and communication channel costs can increase exponentially when data and analytics are shared among partners, 2) early entrant data co-ownership advantages exist when shared data remains shared after a contract ends, 3) welldesigned garbage collection processes for a partnering ecosystem are needed when data does not remain shared after contracts end, 4) when partners share analytical models and data ownership, there needs to be adequate communications capacity to handle expected update and data transfer volatility and 5) democratization of data and analytics ownership in an ecosystem with many partners comes at a higher cost in infrastructure and communication loads than if data and analytics remain proprietary.