04 Nov Prof Calzada invited talk at Global Innovation Coop Summit 2025 at Terra Vedras (Portugal) on Data Cooperatives on 27th October

On 27 October 2025, Prof. Igor Calzada delivered an invited talk at the Global Innovation Coop Summit (GICS) 2025, held in Torres Vedras, Portugal, within Workshop 2.3 dedicated to “Building a Global Cooperative Network in the Age of AI.” His presentation, titled:

“Building a Global Cooperative Network in the Age of AI: Why Data Cooperatives Struggle to Emerge—and How We Fix It”

brought together international experts, cooperative leaders, and policymakers to address one of the most pressing challenges in the digital era: how cooperative principles can be translated into data governance and artificial intelligence (AI) systems for public benefit.

Bridging Cooperative Principles and Data Governance

Drawing on more than six years of action research in Europe and North America, Prof. Calzada examined why data cooperatives—initiatives that aim to give citizens collective control over their data—have yet to scale meaningfully. He outlined a decalogue of ten barriers, including extractivist defaults in the digital economy, infrastructure dependency on hyperscalers, the persistence of a “data divide,” and the lack of standardized civic-tech infrastructures.

These findings build upon his peer-reviewed publications:

• Calzada, I. (2020). Platform and Data Co-operatives amidst European Pandemic Citizenship. Sustainability, 12(20): 8309.
• Calzada, I. (2021). Data Co-Operatives through Data Sovereignty. Smart Cities, 4(4): 1158–1172.

Both studies explore how cooperative data governance models can enable people-centred smart cities and advance data sovereignty as a democratic and territorial goal.

A Cooperative Playbook for the AI Era

In the second part of his talk, Prof. Calzada presented a seven-point cooperative playbook for AI-era data governance, offering a roadmap for policymakers, cooperatives, and civic organizations seeking to operationalize data sovereignty. The playbook emphasizes:

• Mission-first, revenue-real models anchored in member value;
• City-regional pilots that federate into transnational networks;
• Cooperative fiduciary data intermediaries ensuring consent and benefit-sharing;
• Open, privacy-preserving technological stacks to avoid vendor lock-in;
• Procurement levers and policy alignment favouring cooperative data custodians;
• People-centred metrics measuring community benefit, not just data volume;
• Data literacy programs to overcome the “data divide.”

From Principles to Practice: Action Research and Policy Pilots

Calzada proposed concrete use cases that can advance immediately—such as community health data stewardship, mobility intelligence for drivers and riders, energy flexibility, and tenant data trusts—all aligning cooperative values with real public-interest applications.

He argued that data cooperatives should become the operative mechanism translating digital rights and data sovereignty into everyday city-regional services under the broader vision of People-Centred Smart Cities.

A Call to Action for Global Cooperative Networks

To conclude, Prof. Calzada invited participants to identify local use cases within their cooperative ecosystems that could demonstrate data stewardship within six months. His final message was clear:

“Technical innovation alone isn’t enough. The barriers are institutional, cultural, and political: extractivist defaults, infrastructure captivity, and a chronic lack of trust.

But if we, as a global cooperative movement, align our missions—from Mondragon to Montreal, from the Basque Country to California—data sovereignty can become not a slogan, but a shared infrastructure for the age of AI.”

Context and Significance

The Global Innovation Coop Summit—organized by the Project Liberty Institute, the Decentralization Research Center (DRC), and MONDRAGON—continues to serve as a critical platform for rethinking the social economy in the context of AI, data governance, and digital sovereignty.

This 2025 edition featured the introduction of ASETT (Arizmendiarrieta Social Economy Think Tank), a new initiative led by MONDRAGON to foster global dialogue and innovation in the cooperative sector—aligning closely with Calzada’s ongoing research on AI for Social Innovation and Data Cooperatives.

Keywords: Data Cooperatives, AI Governance, Social Economy, Digital Sovereignty, Cooperative Innovation, MONDRAGON, Project Liberty Institute, Decentralization Research Center, People-Centred Smart Cities.