A practical guide for practitioners seeking to create value with big data

Purpose Practitioners, despite competing in a difficult environment, struggle to understand or implement researchers’ findings that may support the development of sustainable competitive advantage. Following design science research using a gamification framework, the purpose of this study is to develop Game of Streams, a boundary object fostering practitioners’ capabilities to generate IT-dependent strategic initiatives. The Game of Streams method is available following a creative commons license and has two benefits for practitioners. First, it allows practitioners to ideate IT-dependent strategic initiatives with big data fitting their context. Second, it supports the understanding of a taxonomy originating in academic research about big data, precisely Digital Data Streams. Design/methodology/approach Through design science research methodology, the author investigates the research/practice gap. This study created with and for firms Game of Streams, a boundary object using gamification. The author tested this boundary object with different organizations from small- and medium-sized enterprises to multinationals and proved its effectiveness in generating IT-dependent strategic initiatives. Findings Game of Streams is enhancing practitioners’ use of research conclusions from academic literature. This study demonstrates that academic literature can impact practice better than before using boundary objects and gamification. Originality/value The gamification of research to bridge the research/practice gap is an emerging subject in the literature. This study offers an approach that allows practitioners to actively participate while manipulating research concepts in their context to generate IT-dependent strategic initiatives.