Balancing Big Data Analytics and Privacy in Innovation: A Framework for Successful Product Development

This study explores how big data analytics capabilities enhance new product development in healthcare, emphasizing the critical role of service innovation in leveraging these capabilities to drive patient-centric solutions while managing privacy concerns. While big data analytics capabilities can drive medical innovation by providing insights into patient outcomes and disease trends, stringent regulations like GDPR create trade-offs between data-driven innovation and privacy. Using data from 324 healthcare sector professionals in the UK, this study examines how innovation capabilities, internal capabilities, and market knowledge breadth mediate the big data analytics capabilities-new product development relationship, with firm privacy concern moderating these effects. Findings reveal that big data analytics capabilities alone are insufficient for new product development; complementary capabilities are required to maximize their impact. Moreover, firm privacy concern significantly constrains the influence of big data analytics capabilities, underscoring the importance of privacy-compliant data practices. This study contributes to the resource-based view by highlighting big data analytics capabilities’ dependence on other capabilities and offers actionable insights for healthcare managers navigating privacy and innovation demand.