In today’s digital economy, businesses and manufacturers in every country – and in every sector – rely on data to operate, deliver, grow, innovate and prosper. Ensuring that international borders remain open to allow data to move easily between countries – so-called cross-border data flows – is key to connecting companies, both large and small, to their business units, trading partners, workers and customers. Furthermore, data flows are enabling new and innovative products and services that are driving economic growth and creating opportunities for businesses, governments and citizens. That’s why the members of Business Roundtable are calling on global policymakers to strive for trade agreements and laws that reduce growing economic risk by providing greater clarity, consistency and stability for all stakeholders involved in data flows.

In Putting Data to Work: Maximizing the Value of Information in an Interconnected World, Business Roundtable CEOs describe how business, customers, governments and citizens can gain economic and societal benefits by embracing cross-border data flows. Putting Data to Work also offers a framework for policymakers around the world to craft trade agreements and laws that maximize the value of data while giving policymakers the reasonable assurances they seek.

For example, new, networked technologies, such as cloud and mobile, are enabling a new age of innovation and efficiency, but can’t reach their potential without cross-border data flows. By 2015, 1 trillion connected objects and devices will be generating and transmitting data across the planet, making everything from tractors to smart power grids more efficient and effective. But the value generated by this so-called “Internet of Everything” will be hampered if this data can’t freely move across national borders. Similarly, 80 percent of companies that use digital collaboration technologies to link employees around the world see a positive return on their investment, often after just 21-40 months. But without the ability to interconnect sites in different countries and share data, those collaborations can’t take place.

Minimizing restrictions on cross-border data flows also drives economic growth. According to McKinsey, GDP growth from data flows is up to 40% higher in more connected economies than in less connected economies. Further, as noted by the Brookings Institution, each 10 percentage-point increase in the penetration of broadband services leads to a 1.3 percent increase in economic growth and Internet access can reduce the impact of an economy’s geographical isolation from major export markets by 65 percent by enabling access to overseas markets.

To realize the potential of these new technologies and capture the benefits described above and more, Business Roundtable CEOs believe that it is essential to promote interconnectedness, put data to work and seek more productive ways to give governments reasonable assurances while minimizing trade barriers.