# Open Data Spaces Introductory Guidebook Open Data Spaces (ODS) is an open and scalable foundation for distributed data, built on organizational and national diversity by design “Open Dataspaces” as a general term in this document refers to a new-generation distributed data management approach and its constituent concepts. Its design draws on the original dataspace papers in the U.S. (Franklin et al., 2005; Halevy et al., 2006) and data mesh (Dehghani, 2019; Dehghani 2022) as its core, and incorporates verification through collaborative R\&D with private companies and industry groups at a commercial level. This document aims to organize the perspectives needed for business practitioners and corporate planning staff at enterprises and government agencies that use or implement data management and AI services, to make informed decisions — regarding whether to enter, what roles their organization can play, and how to allocate initial investment — when considering entry into dataspace-related businesses. This document is not a technical manual or procedural guide explaining individual specifications or implementation steps, but rather focuses on providing the conceptual understanding and evaluation perspectives necessary for making entry decisions. It is important to develop this understanding while verifying what is possible with standard specifications using actual reference implementation software, and this is intended to be covered with concrete examples in the **ODS Introductory Guidebook for Developers**. Accordingly, this document serves as a prerequisite step, aimed at helping users(both in private and public sector) understand the overall picture of Open Dataspaces from their perspective, identify where business opportunities lie, and distinguish what should be verified in implementation guides and reference implementations beyond that point. ## Copyright Copyright of ODS Introductory Guidebook for Users belongs to IPA. ## License This document (ODS Introductory Guidebook for Users) is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).\ Full license text: