This document discusses how data sharing, curation, and analytics can support innovation in education. It describes how the Open University connects data across different systems like its library catalog, course catalog, and research repositories using semantic technologies and linked data. This integrated data allows for applications like simple maps of university buildings, course recommendations, learning analytics, and personal analytics. Challenges include data heterogeneity, access, and curation. Lessons from smart cities are discussed, like flexible data infrastructures that allow diversity. The goal is supporting the entire learning lifecycle by making rich data available and answering questions like "how can I become X?".