Mapping the Unmapped: Investigating Big Data Companies via Online Sources

Abstract

Since the 2010s, big data has become a trendy term across government, business, and academia. There is a great deal of ambiguity in the definition of big data and the so-called big data sector it gives rise to. It is thus still debatable what companies can be considered big data firms. Studying such an emerging field and collecting firm-level data through surveys in understudied regions are particularly challenging due to the lack of an established and accessible firm directory. Drawing on a research project on Guizhou, the earliest and most prominent national big data pilot zone in China, this article advances an activity-based approach and advocates a triangulation of methods to identify firms that belong to the big data sector. Corporate information query platforms are used and context-specific solutions are proposed. This article would be of interest to researchers who wish to investigate emerging industries when the target population is vaguely defined and hard to identify.

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