SPRING 2021

Company: ASSA ABLOY & Spotify

Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Time period: 20 weeks January through June

Hi!

During spring 2021, we (Michelle Fransson and Marta Sadriu) took part in the CIP Internship Program which allowed us to combine our master’s thesis work with a dual internship opportunity at Spotify and ASSA ABLOY. You might be wondering what Spotify, a global audio streaming service, and ASSA ABLOY, a global leader in access solutions, could possibly have in common. Well, the answer is data.

As more products and services are becoming digital and connected, more data can be collected and stored. This enables companies to access and leverage value embedded in data, which in turn leads to data becoming a new type of property – an invaluable asset that can be produced, processed, transferred and stolen. Therefore, our project goal was to investigate “Data as an Intellectual Asset”. This meant defining how data drives value for Spotify and ASSA ABLOY, and how companies can work to manage, protect and control their data in an efficient way. By using the tools and frameworks related to Intellectual Asset Management, taught in the ICM track, we were able to investigate and capture data assets at the two companies by combining a legal, business and technology perspective. An important part of the result was the identified difficulties in communicating about data across organizations.  Therefore, the project resulted in a “Data Asset Framework” that can help organizations understand their data as intellectual assets, and create guidelines for how data can be utilized, protected and controlled.

One of the major highlights of this project has been the opportunity to deep dive into two of the most interesting Swedish companies that operate and compete on the global market – a truly unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! We were given free reins to investigate the companies in order to understand how they operate and create value. This mainly meant conducting a wide number of interviews with employees across both companies. The research was complemented by an investigation of relevant literature in order to strengthen the quality of the results and provide a strong anchoring to existing knowledge about data.

Conclusively, we would like to express our gratitude towards our amazing supervisors at ASSA ABLOY, Katarina Wendin, and at Spotify, Ellenor Hayes & Per Wendin, who have supported us in the best ways possible through this crazy and incredible journey. We highly recommend applying to the CIP Internship Program, and especially to a dual internship opportunity, as this has been an invaluable experience for us!