Where social media and innovation intersect
This guest post is by Jeffrey Phillips, vice president of sales and marketing for OVO.
While it was once regarded primarily as a private activity, innovation has increasingly become a process that encourages participation by an organization’s employees, prospects, customers and partners. This system of external or open innovation creates a community that looks very much like a social network. In fact, open innovation communities are simply a specific example of social networking.
Increasingly, the software tools that support innovation even resemble social media tools. These applications incorporate discussion forums, blogs, comments, rating or ranking capability, and the ability to alert others to ideas or changes in the idea. These features are similar to features found in social networking sites. Spigit, one of the software applications that supports innovation communities, suggests that ideas are “social objects” that form the basis of a community.
There are a number of implications associated with this shift. Among them:
- Many brains, and many perspectives, are better than few brains from one perspective. Firms such as Proctor & Gamble have completely reversed the way their scientists generate and receive ideas.
- Identifying the individuals with the best insights and perspectives is crucial. While many people contribute, identifying the “best” and most consistent contributors is important.
- Understanding the intent and purpose of the community is important. The interests of Dell (behind IdeaStorm) differ from the interests of LinkedIn or Facebook. Dell is interested in ideas that benefit Dell’s products and services, while Facebook and LinkedIn provide a utility for their customers.
- The design and intent of the community matters. A community that allows anyone to suggest any idea will achieve different results from a community that invites specific people or companies and asks the participants to submit ideas aligned with key strategic needs. The open suggestion model will attract a large number of participants, but the ideas submitted will represent a wide range of interests, issues and opportunities. The invitational model that requests responses to key topics will generate far fewer ideas, but their importance and relevance will be much higher on average than the open community.
Where is this trend leading us? Increasingly we can see research and development outsourced to smaller, distributed individuals or firms. Significantly complex problems can be broken into more manageable pieces and distributed to a number of innovators working in a range of fields. Firms that understand how to interpret the activity of the communities will gain new insights into customer needs and trends, and will identify lead users. Participants in the innovation communities will have a greater voice in the design and development of new products and services but won’t benefit monetarily.
Social media has created a completely new capability — open, external innovation based on communities. These capabilities have disrupted traditional innovation processes and approaches and created entirely new innovation techniques. Idea generation will never be the same.
Image credit, Raycat, via iStock
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Tags: community development, innovation
Categories: Emerging Technologies
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Posted by Janelle on August 31st, 2009 at 10:33 am
Another great example of an open innovation community is powered by Brightidea for Adobe Acrobat. http://www.ideas.acrobat.com
Posted by Kristin Antin on August 31st, 2009 at 11:05 am
Great article! I am happy to add that the New Tactics in Human Rights project has been implementing this kind of strategy since September of 2007! Through our interactive website, we promote strategic thinking and tactical innovation among human rights practitioners around the world. We invite specific practitioners, with expertise in particular tactics, to participate in a peer-to-peer exchange focused on one tactic. This month, we are hosting an online dialogue on ‘using shadow reports for advocacy’ – http://www.newtactics.org/en/blog/new-tactics/using-shadow-reports-advocacy. Each dialogue is 7 days long. They have been very successful in helping practitioners identify their tactics and strategies – and reflect on the effectiveness of their work!
Thanks!
Kristin
Online community Builder
Posted by Vickie Smith-Siculiano, PMP on August 31st, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Great post. I think my favorite line about how social media and innovation is this: Many brains, and many perspectives, are better than few brains from one perspective. The world is truly flat and sharing thoughts and ideas is how societies have evolved – how can we not further evolve online! Great stuff that is food for thought. Thanks
Posted by Thoughts From the Girl Next Door » Blog Archive » links for 2009-08-31 on August 31st, 2009 at 6:12 pm
[...] SmartBlog On Social Media » Where social media and innovation intersect While it was once regarded primarily as a private activity, innovation has increasingly become a process that encourages participation by an organization’s employees, prospects, customers and partners. This system of external or open innovation creates a community that looks very much like a social network. In fact, open innovation communities are simply a specific example of social networking. (tags: innovation socialmedia socialnetworks tools f1mhackner) [...]
Posted by Ron Kost on September 1st, 2009 at 11:07 am
Jeffery, you’ve really done a nice job in pointing to why social media will become as ubiquitous as email is now to business, or Search is to marketing. With the right tools in place social media will help spur innovation. In today’s business climate it is all about innovation through collaboration.
In point of fact, IBM has dedicated a part of their site toward Innovation and collaboration…IBM Centers for Solution Innovation
http://www-03.ibm.com/services/innovation/
On my site CIOZone.com (A ProSocial Network for CIOs) we have an article that places the spotlight on how Dominos and Pizza Hut have started to embrace social media as a marketing and pr tool…
http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Social-Networking/Twitter-for-Pizza-Pie-Purveyors-Embrace-Social-Media/2.html
I also believe the better the tool sets various communities are offered, the better the community will be at addressing specific topics. Social media allows business executives as well as consumers the opportunity to learn.
Nice thread, good comments.
Ron Kost
VP Sales
CIOZone / CFOZone (PSN Inc.)
Posted by John Simpson on September 2nd, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Nice article. The smartest person in the room is everyone. The most impactful trend in business will be this intersection of social networking and business processes – and there’s none more important to companies than the innovation process – where we all know failure runs ramped. In strategy, leverage your collective genius to build great products and we all benefit – customers, partners, companies, economy, environment. But it’s easier said than done. If you think you have a lot of data now, open up your process to all stakeholders and you’ll really be swimming in it.
At this stage, there’s a need for less talk and more action. There’s no lack of vision for this, but the gap is in the practicality of how companies put this strategy into practice. That’s what is exciting to see take shape over the next few years. there’s little doubt the trend is real and it’s happening fast. But, what’s hype and what’s real? To be determined.
Posted by Links Galore: Management, Social Media and so on | sebastiankeil.de on September 3rd, 2009 at 7:58 am
[...] Where social media and innovation intersect • smartblog on social media [...]
Posted by Ron Kost on February 5th, 2010 at 2:37 am
Jeffery, you've really done a nice job in pointing to why social media will become as ubiquitous as email is now to business, or Search is to marketing. With the right tools in place social media will help spur innovation. In today's business climate it is all about innovation through collaboration.
In point of fact, IBM has dedicated a part of their site toward Innovation and collaboration…IBM Centers for Solution Innovation
http://www-03.ibm.com/services/innovation/
On my site CIOZone.com (A ProSocial Network for CIOs) we have an article that places the spotlight on how Dominos and Pizza Hut have started to embrace social media as a marketing and pr tool…
http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Social-Network...
I also believe the better the tool sets various communities are offered, the better the community will be at addressing specific topics. Social media allows business executives as well as consumers the opportunity to learn.
Nice thread, good comments.
Ron Kost
VP Sales
CIOZone / CFOZone (PSN Inc.)