Towards digital innovation: Stakeholder interactions in agricultural data ecosystems in Croatia

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.