PhD candidate Responsible innovation: Developing new products through privacy by design

Are you an aspiring researcher with a keen interest in innovation and technology management? Would you like to assist organisations by developing best practices for better addressing privacy issues in innovation with your research? Then you have a part to play as a PhD candidate. Through this research project, you will help institutions and their stakeholders to better respect privacy in new products and services.
The Department of Business Administration at the Nijmegen School of Management and iHub are looking for a PhD candidate on responsible innovation, in particular on privacy by design patterns. As a PhD candidate, you will be formally based in the Marketing group and at iHub, which is Radboud University's interdisciplinary research hub on digitalisation and society. You will work on a PhD project under the supervision of Dr Vera Blazevic, Dr Robert Kok, and Dr Jaap-Henk Hoepman.

The research you will conduct for your PhD thesis concerns 'Responsible innovation through privacy design patterns'. Firms are increasingly using big data opportunities to develop digital innovations, which creates privacy issues due to the use of personal data. Engaging in responsible innovation, these firms struggle with paradoxical privacy tensions during their innovation activities such as the changing nature of privacy preferences, regulatory changes to privacy laws and integrating a multiplicity of actor perspectives. Also, privacy goals may conflict with other priorities such as incorporating value-added features and environmental sustainability in the design of new products. ICT research has developed privacy by design patterns and tested some of them in software development of digital systems. However, their insights are largely unconnected to innovation management research that investigates the use and impact of big data opportunities. This project aims to combine these research streams to understand how embedding privacy design patterns in innovation development can help innovation researchers and R&D managers to better define privacy issues, and design and deploy better privacy solutions in digital, responsible innovations, thereby improving the privacy protection of all the stakeholders involved.

Using three projects, we first want to establish the state of the art of the privacy by design pattern catalogue through a systematic literature review. Second, using a qualitative, empirical approach, we aim to explore how innovation managers deal with the challenges of embedding privacy practices in their innovation activities. Third, we will use an intervention methodology approach to determine the effectiveness of different approaches, i.e. pattern tooling, structures and capabilities, of embedding privacy by design practices in responsible innovation. The project will contribute academically through linking ICT insights with responsible, digital innovation literature. We assist organisations with developing best practices for better addressing privacy issues in innovation, thereby driving societal impact, helping institutions and their stakeholders to better respect privacy in new products and services.

A more detailed project description is available upon request from Dr Vera Blazevic ([email protected] ). On the basis of this project description you will be expected to develop a more elaborate research proposal in this area in the first year of your appointment. This proposal will have to be approved by the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Nijmegen School of Management.

Your teaching duties will be about 120 hours per year (e.g. supporting existing courses, Bachelor's and Master's thesis supervision). We will ensure that you have sufficient time for your own training.