Use big data to leverage customer need diversity for radical innovation

ABSTRACT

Despite the growing diversity of customer needs, little empirical evidence would guide managers to leverage customer need diversity (CND) for radical innovation. Building on the knowledge-based view and dynamic capabilities, the authors explore relationships among CND, strategic flexibility, big data analytics capabilities, and radical innovation performance. With 308 survey responses from innovation managers, the authors find that CND impacts radical innovation performance via (1) mediation through strategic flexibility and (2) moderation by volume, variety, and velocity capabilities associated with big data analytics. The moderation effects of volume and velocity capabilities are positive and negative simultaneously, depending on the purpose for which CND is utilised. Therefore, to leverage customer need diversity, firms need to build strategic flexibility and exercise caution when utilising big data analytics capabilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Radical innovation
• customer needs
• strategic flexibility
• big data
• new product development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. While our research focuses on volume, variety, and velocity, it is important to note that recent research added four more Vs to characterise big data which are veracity, value, viability, and visualisation. We focus on volume, variety, and velocity since they are the original properties of big data. We conceptualise them as a firm’s capabilities associated with big data analytics.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tereza Dean

Tereza Dean is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Ball State University. She holds a Ph.D. degree from Michigan State University. Tereza’s research interests include product innovation, marketing strategy, and marketing channels and her work has been published in Journal of Marketing, Marketing Letters, Technovation, and Journal of Marketing Education.

Haisu Zhang

Haisu Zhang is Associate Professor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at New Jersey Institute of Technology. His research interests include product innovation, marketing strategy, sharing economy, and 3D printing. His work has been published in Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, R&D Management, Journal of International Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Technovation, International Journal of Production Research, and Journal of Organizational Change Management.

Yazhen Xiao

Yazhen Xiao is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Portland State University. She obtained her doctorate in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Her research interests include innovation and new product development, digital innovation adoption, and health care services. She has published in refereed journals, including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Service Research, Industrial Marketing Management, International Marketing Review, and Review of Marketing Research.