Big Data Facilitation, Utilization, and Monetization: Exploring the 3Vs in a New Product Development Process

TLDR

Big data is reshaping new product development, prompting heavy investment, yet firms lack clear guidance on leveraging it for innovation success in dynamic markets. The study operationalizes and analyzes the 3Vs—volume, variety, and velocity—of big data usage within an NPD model to improve insights. Using a survey of 261 managers on NPD processes and big data usage, the authors identify antecedents of multidimensional big‑data usage. Exploration orientation boosts all three big‑data dimensions, while exploitation has no effect; moreover, customer turbulence strengthens the velocity–NPR link but weakens the volume–NPR link.

Abstract

Big data is transforming the new product development (NPD) process. Organizations are investing heavily in big data capabilities to capitalize on the ongoing analytics movement. Yet there is a lack of understanding of how firms can leverage big data as a capability to generate innovation success in dynamic marketplaces. To address this need for improved insights, the authors operationalize and analyze the 3Vs of big data usage—volume, variety, and velocity—in an NPD model. Drawing on the results of a survey of 261 managers reporting on their business unit's NPD processes and big data usage, this study identifies the antecedents of the multidimensional usage of big data. Empirically assessing the effects of firm orientations, the authors show that an exploration orientation has a positive effect on all three dimensions of a firm's big data usage while an exploitation orientation has no effect. Moving downstream, the results also reveal that the environmental factor of customer turbulence interacts differentially with the big data usage dimensions' impact on new product revenue (NPR). Specifically, customer turbulence accentuates the relationship between big data velocity and NPR but attenuates the relationship between big data volume and NPR.