I've told clients this for years: companies that treat #privacy solely as a compliance cost are costing themselves real revenue. Now, fourteen years of Harvard Business Review data proves my case – Data Privacy Is a Growth Strategy. 

Kelly Martin and Robert W. Palmatier studied 360 corporate privacy announcements over fourteen years. Their data, discussed in the HBR article, show companies that made their privacy practices visible and took real ownership of them saw 12% higher customer purchase intent and nearly $870M more in shareholder value than peers who did not. 

For companies customers already trusted, the effect was 255% stronger. Real money – all from doing things you're already legally required to do, but done in a way designed to capture that revenue.

The advancement of privacy laws has required companies to spend more money building privacy programs. I see most make the spend, but then treat their programs like a legal infrastructure cost center. Their programs are invisible, internal, never communicated, never utilized. That's the gap this research proves. Your customers can't reward you for something they don't know you're doing. So if you're going to do it anyway, why not get credit for it?

The researchers' data confirms what I've seen anecdotally. Visibility matters. Ownership matters. Bolting privacy on after the fact doesn't work.

If your privacy program lives entirely inside your legal or IT department, it's overhead. If your customers actually understand what you're doing with their data, it's a brand asset, and apparently worth $870M in firm value, on average.

This article is worth your time, and worth a conversation with your business leaders about how to leverage your privacy compliance to drive revenue growth. 

What's the biggest thing stopping your organization from making privacy visible externally?

#PrivacyLaw #DataPrivacy #TechLaw #AILaw #AIGovernance