A Book Idea: Open Innovation Meets Social Media
I have begun work on what I hope will become a book that looks into the intersection of open innovation and social media. You get an idea of my early thoughts in this presentation: Open Innovation Meets Social Media
The key reason for focusing on this intersection is that interaction and involvement are two terms that work equally well for both open innovation and social media. You could even argue that open innovation and social become inseparable from each other because of this.
At the moment, I consider these key parts for the book:
Overview: I explain what is happening and why this intersection is relevant for everyone working with innovation.
Tools: I provide an introduction to social media tools that are currently being used to drive innovation. LinkedIn and Twitter are the most used tools, but others also matters or have potential.
Cases: I plan to include lots of cases in my work. Some corporate cases could be GE, IBM and Psion as have interesting initiatives going on. Others will definitely be added and I am open for input.
Exercises: A collection of small exercises that can help innovation people learn and extract value out of social media tools. Ideas are appreciated.
I would very much like to engage my network and the readers of my blog on this as it is a broad topic with many different approaches and answers. I will blog frequently and those posts will often have questions for which I hope you can help provide some insights and perspective.
Actually, I will end this blog post with the first two questions:
What are the best tools for building corporate innovation capabilities?
How can big and small companies find each other and work better together through social media tools?
Your comments are highly appreciated. Please also help spread the word : – )
I guess there are no unambiguous answers to your questions. After all ,tools are tools and it is how we use them that will warrant desired results. But here is my opinion.
1) What are the best tools for building corporate innovation capabilities?
- Wikipedia or any wiki (as this induces collaborative approach to info/knowledge creation/exchange/share).
- Prezi (or another collaborative presentation tool)
- StumbleUpon-lie capability, especially in information-intensive portals/sites (allows information creation/discovery/ranking/sharing/filtration)
- Yammer (any messenger that will allow instant access and sharing information)`
- Ning or a platform alike
- Discussion boards and forums (aimed at sharing information/knowledge/ideas and getting feedback/questions/new ideas)
2) How can big and small companies find each other and work better together through social media tools?
All of social media tools can help spreading information about big and small and corresponding needs and interests.
Once there is some knowledge about each other (let's say a big and a small company that are interested in working together), they can come together and decide to work i na number of ways.
To bring Informal gatherings (as example, opencoffee), industry-specific seminars/workshops (which bring big and small together), sponsored (by big companies looking for small companies or individuals) projects.
Some additional points that popped out in my mind re the below question.
1) What are the best tools for building corporate innovation capabilities?
- interactive maps
- liveblogging (from event/product launches)
- video blogging/commenting (illustrating execution of services, product manufacturing)
- photo galleries – visual is the best way to share stories
- crowdsourcing, internal and firm-client joint team contributions/brainstorming/bi-directional feedback sessions
All of above will generate excessive amounts of information which can, properly handled, turned into innovative insights, and eventually, in my view, into additional revenue/profit.
Hi, I have some comments about the book idea as I have been interviewing a few companies regarding the topic you want to address. First of all I have a question regarding the statement in the overview that this intersection is relevant for everyone working with innovation. First of all I would like to understand the term open innovation. Is it addressing open and closed networks? Hierarchal and flat governance? From my research I have found that a lot of companies that seems to be using social media and open innovation platforms or crowdsourcing do it more as marketing campaign as compared to the innovative benefits. I have also found that some sectors/industries cannot undertake open innovation and integrate social Media as part of their R&D as IPR will be threatened and that companies that have long innovative cycles cannot share their thoughts through social media as they would lose their competitive advantage. Of course companies such as threadless.com are prime examples that it works, but as far as I have found this is merely the lucky ones.
I saw in your presentation that you mention the Fiat contest, which has been seen as a successful innovation case study. But I am asking myself if it is. They will never produce the car, they will not use the ideas generated as far as I have understood it, but yes they created press and brand awareness which is good for the company, but is this all social Media and innovation has to offer. I have found this to be the case for quite a few cases. It may help spark some idea generation at the R&D departments but is that enough to call it a successful integration between innovation and Social Media, or a good marketing campaign. To me this seems to be a bit fuzzy sometimes.
In terms of Tools I think that the incorporation of Social Media into open innovation platforms are the tools and not social Media per se, since Social Media is more a way of attracting users to your online platform? Or am I wrong? This can be done in many different ways, either target all global networks such as facebook and the like or target more specific communities such as designer blogs etc to attract the "right" people.
In terms of cases, what I did was to contact different online platform providers of these crowdsourcing/open innovation platforms, and through them I came in contact with the companies that have undertaken this strategy. The reason for this was that most often the providers of these services control the network and spread the word of the contests/innovative challenges. They act as the structural hole in a sense.
I don't mean to be critical; I just find the topic interesting and would like to shed light on some of my thoughts.