In a real-world example. There’s an organization in the UK that funds the preservation and sharing of human-created paper products (digitizing books, etc. as ways to share and preserve objects in danger of being lost to time and the elements). How does this organization find potential materials?
In much the same way, I would venture there are geological survey companies that would benefit from our data (and would potentially share profits for benefit of “free” data). I believe this is already happening (in pers comm).
Rui Figueroa gave a marvelous talk about the vine-wine industry and wild relatives discovery benefits. I’m guessing there are more such opportunities. It seems much like a dating service. It’s awfully difficult to find a match if you’re not in the database.
If I have resources (objects) and you have funds, we can’t bring those together unless we can make the objects known to the potential stakeholder / supporter. It’s like a chicken-egg problem (or opportunity?).
I also suspect (but am trying to keep it short), that there are eco-tourisum opportunities in sharing our metadata about collections … AND most definitely in the movie industry too.