The US and UK governments have been leading the world in the field of open data - putting hundreds of thousands of sets of raw data on the internet for the public to access, slice and dice in whatever way they wish.

According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web (and instigator of the UK initiative), enterprise is being left behind. And he has a point: how many businesses would be prepared to open up their masses of proprietary data to the general public?

Yet, believes Berners-Lee, real value can be created for enterprises and governments alike by letting the public get its hands on their data - and it can far outweigh the downsides. "Data is about relationships," he told a TED conference in 2009. "And the more things you have to connect together, the more powerful it is."

Companies that have already dared to do it - and won - include:

• US retailer BestBuy (to increase SEO)

• US online movie rental company Netflix (to "crowdsource" an improved recommendation algorithm)

• Canadian mining firm Goldcorp (to, quite literally, strike gold)

Do you know any other examples? Let us know by commenting below.