How Social Media Can Foster Innovation Within Your Business
Aug 17th, 2009 by David Svet
What would you do if you suddenly learned that social media could make your business radically more innovative and competitive? The two most popular, and also polar, schools of thought on social media are that it’s the best thing since sliced bread and it’s the biggest waste of time on earth. But very few folks are looking at social media as an internal source for fostering innovation and competitiveness. I think this is a lost opportunity.
Social media levels the playing field, breaks down barriers, and gives everyone an equal voice — total heresy in a traditional, top down business structure. But, when it is embraced it provides a public means for everyone to quickly create, share, and critique ideas. Since social media is a many-to-many communication media that enables those three processes it is inherently valuable to the internal development of innovation and competitiveness.
Would you be better off if a group of mid level workers were able to share their ideas across silos to develop a new way to improve efficiency? Or, would you be better off waiting for traditional communication and cooperation channels to come up with the same result? What if everyone in your company could publish an internal blog, wiki, or website? What if your employees were free to share what they learn or find interesting via Yammer or one of the many other corporate micro-blogging services? (Jeremiah Owyang wrote a great review of them here.) Wouldn’t blog comments and the flow of conversation increase the speed with which ideas could be created, shared, and critiqued? Isn’t that how innovation happens? Doesn’t fast innovation make you more competitive? Doesn’t that make social media seem more like the best thing since sliced bread?
The next SPURspectives post will discuss how to do this.
I also see social media forcing companies to innovate around how they do business with their customers as well as in their product development (if it’s a company with a web based product). Even if you’re just “listening” and watching you’ll be forced to make decisions on whether or not to add that new feature or engage with your customer where they are. Social media is (or can be) a great accelerator!
http://twitter.com/franswaa
Absolutely! Social media is first and foremost a means to engage with your customers. It’s also a way to treat your colleagues as customers to listen and respond. You’re right, it’s a huge accelerator!
Thanks!
Another great tool in this areas is Webstom by Brightidea.com. Check out how adobe is using Webstorm for social innovation: ideas.acrobat.com
I’ve been fortunate enough to work in both a formal Innovation function and in a Social Media function in a Fortune 100 organization. I agree with all your points above, and would like to add where I see the biggest benefit.
To me, innovation is a new way of solving a problem or meeting a need. What’s great about Social Media is that everyone is talking about their problems, needs and frustration.
The best way to use Social Media to innovate is to use it to listen to consumers. Study their needs, research the details of their problems, & use those as stimuli to create new ideas.
The best thing about this approach is that it doesn’t require everyone in your company to do it. A savvy market research group can crank out a wealth of insights with all the data and conversations on the web.