Social Media & Innovation

Now that the SharePoint 2010 report on social computing is in the production queue, time to move on to my next report: 

Working Title: "Leveraging Social Media Within Innovation Strategies"

Target Audience: Innovation program managers, innovation project teams, decision-makers involved in collaboration and social media strategies, IT managers, architects, and others involved in knowledge management efforts.

Problem Statements:

• Have economic realities impacted innovation efforts?
• Innovation is a broad term, what’s an effective way to categorize an initiatives scale and scope?
• How is social media helping innovation become more participatory?
• What use case scenarios illustrate how social tools augment innovation efforts?

Background: Innovation has been a re-occurring theme within organizations over the past decade. In the past, innovation efforts were often the purview of assigned groups and driven by formal processes (often with mixed results). Internally, the topic is sometimes considered an off-shoot of knowledge management (e.g., "ideation”). Externally, the term is associated with crowdsoucring. Fusing internal and external thinking and approaches towards innovation has become more the norm, leading to an “innovation renaissance” influenced by social media trends. Organizations are exploring use of social application to make innovation a more open and transparent activity co-owned by its participants. However, contributions from non-traditional participants (customers, employees) presents its own set of challenges in terms of community management, decision-rights, and business alignment.

Thesis: Management and R&D teams are no longer the only participants in an organization's innovation efforts. Social tools have made innovation a more open and transparent effort where customers and employees become active contributors. However, leveraging the free-flow of ideas needs some level of structure to transform ideas into actual business outcomes.

Comments

[Janelle]

Totally agree that 'leveraging the free-flow of ideas needs some level of structure to transform ideas into actual business outcomes.'

That is why Brightidea offers a full suite of tools that cover the full lifecycle of an idea from the front-end collection, through evaluation and then putting real, tangible business metrics around ideas in order fully integrate the ideas into the company's business processes.

[clay barham]

Innovation and new start-ups begin without any social media input. It begins with a gnawing idea in someone's gut followed by the courage to pursue it as one of those people who, like the pebble dropper, makes waves and leaves wakes disturbing the accepted and established way things are done, in spite of the many critics. Without that, social media is for what? See Save Pebble Droppers & Prosperity on Amazon and claysamerica.com.

[Daniel]

There is little doubt that innovation is accelerated when it is participative and shaped toward a goal or outcome.

Spigit provides a scalable (and rewarding) social media platform for the life-cycle of an idea through actionable innovation. Through the use of graduation parameters as well as reputation weighted analytics, an enterprise can automate this "transformation of ideas into actual business outcomes."

Good thoughts, Mike. Thank you.

[Babowebprof]

Regarding your thesis:
"Management and R&D teams are no longer the only participants in an organization's innovation efforts." They never were the only participants. In most organizations, employees, customers and suppliers are already active participants in the innovation process.

"Social tools have made innovation a more open and transparent effort where customers and employees become active contributors."
I agree that social tools have made the process more open. But, at the same time, they make contributions harder to capture than with more structured collaboration tools.

"However, leveraging the free-flow of ideas needs some level of structure to transform ideas into actual business outcomes." Exactly right. Not many companies do this well and not many tools exist to help them do it.

[Nicholas Webb]

I find that the first order of business is to define innovation. Most innovation experts and managers have long protracted definitions that make the process hard to understand. In my upcoming book the digital innovation playbook I defined innovation as " The process of delivering exceptional customer value through active listening and targeted observation" in a digitally connected world we need to first understand who our customers are. Then we need to participate in their digital communities. By playing with them in their digital sandbox we're able to listen and observe. If done properly this allows us to transmute those observations into relevant innovations that deliver layered value.

Nicholas Webb
www.theinnovationplaybook.com