The impact of the EU General data protection regulation on product innovation

Knut Blind, Crispin Niebel and Christian Rammer

Industry and Innovation, 2024, vol. 31, issue 3, 311-351

Abstract: In May 2018, a new regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), on data protection came in the European Union into force. It requires firms to update their data protection strategy and may complicate the use of data related to individuals, with potentially adverse effects on product innovation. This study provides evidence on the likely impacts of the GDPR on innovation. We employ a conditional difference-in-differences research design and estimate firm fixed-effects models based on data from the German innovation survey. We find that the GDPR led to a substantial shift from radical to incremental product innovation. Our finding indicates that the GDPR stimulated firms to re-organise their data management in a more profound way than they would have done in the absence of the regulation, opening up opportunities for improving existing products. The additional resources needed for complying with the GDPR limited their capacity for developing entirely new products.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13662716.2023.2271858 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:indinn:v:31:y:2024:i:3:p:311-351

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIAI20

DOI: 10.1080/13662716.2023.2271858

Access Statistics for this article

Industry and Innovation is currently edited by Associate Professor Mark Lorenzen

More articles in Industry and Innovation from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().