How to build a successful business model around open source software
Summary
[Read: The new Chinese digital consumers your business needs to target] This approach allows individuals and organizations to stay at the forefront of an innovative field (here: data science) while at the same time productionizing what has shown to work. What all models have in common, albeit to different degrees, is that they leverage the open source community for early adoption, essentially crowdsourcing many of the marketing and presales activities. Data scientists inside organizations start their individual projects using the open source software without having to go through lengthy business budgeting, approval, and purchasing processes. Moreover, since open source software is used increasingly for teaching data science in academia, new entrants to the industry bring along the core expertise needed to hit the ground running. Not surprisingly, our numbers clearly indicate that chances of converting commercial interest into a successful customer relationship are far higher when we already have a group of active open source users in-house.