Attracting the attention of businesses across all sectors, Big Data offers numerous benefits to businesses with the ability to exploit its full potential. Companies that use small data derive all the value of that data from its primary use, the purpose for which the data was originally collected. With Big Data, “the value of data shifts from its primary use to its potential future uses” (Mayer-Schonberger & Cukier, 2013, p.99), thus leading to a considerable increase in business efficiency. The use of Big Data analysis allows companies to increase their capacity for innovation and achieve substantial reductions in costs and deadlines. Additionally, big data techniques can be applied to support internal business decisions by identifying complex relationships within the data. However, it is also important to recognize that much of the value of Big Data “rests largely on the continued willingness of the public to freely provide data about themselves” (Brough, n.d., para. 11). As previously stated, much of the content of Big Data is unstructured data from social media sites etc., and so if this data were to no longer be publicly available due to regulations etc., the value of Big Data would be considerably reduced. Latent Data Value: Data RecyclingAs the era of Big Data advances, the importance of data is evolving. In addition to supporting business decisions and transactions, data is now often the commodity traded, as businesses begin to understand the seemingly limitless potential value inherent in data itself. Decreasing storage costs, combined with the ability to collect data passively (thanks to technological advancement), means that many businesses find it easier to justify preserving data rather than discarding it once its primary function has been fulfilled. is completed...... middle of paper... ...etc. to customers and interact with them in real time, which can have a huge impact on customer loyalty. Again, the time reductions represent a significant benefit, and are expected to increase with continued advancement in processing capabilities. Clearly, there are many benefits to working with Big Data analytics and procedures, and as computing capabilities continue to advance, these benefits are only expected. to increase. The value of data now depends more on its cumulative potential uses than on its initial use; However, it is unlikely that a single company will be able to unlock all the dormant value of a given data set. Therefore, in order to maximize the value of Big Data, companies can license their accumulated data to third parties in exchange for royalties. In doing so, all agents are incentivized to maximize the value that can be extracted through data reuse..