Last week, the Dutch Financial Times reported that the Netherlands moved up to the seventh place in the yearly competitiveness index by the World Economic Forum (WEF). To close the gap with the top five, social innovation needs to be tackled. Not only raising R&D budgets, but also better innovation management and work smarter.
As companies start looking at ways to incorporate social media models and technologies into the innovation and product development process, there seem to be two very defined – and very vocal – arguments for and against. One side seems to have the opinion that social media will save the world. If everyone can just happily and openly share and co-create, life will be better and easier. The other side believes that social media is a waste of time and has no place in business, much less embedded in the sacred innovation and product development processes that many companies hope will help them stay afloat and even grow during the recession and recovery.
Coca Cola is taking its Social Media efforts one step further. The brand is going to hire an agency that will mine Social Media data to understand what customers are saying about the brand and looking for. It’s an attempt to consistently understand the Social Web and benefit from it for the different brands, supply chains and so on.
Many of us have seen those “Did You Know?” videos on YouTube. With millions of views, these compelling videos give facts and stats on globalization in the information age, demonstrating the pervasiveness of social media as a medium for collaboration, knowledge sharing, open discussion and relationship building. This post briefly discusses three areas that show the most promise for generating real business value.
Social media networks make it possible to harness the ideas, information, knowledge, collaborations and passion of workers around innovation as never before, explains Colin Crabtree.
Innovation management has become one of the most critical factors contributing to sustained business growth. Co-creation is an extremely powerful driver of innovation provided that you manage the process and harness social technology. In this article Catherine Constantinides takes a closer look at the different tools you need to consider to be successful.
Companies that invest in developing strong innovation teams in their core product areas can extend that skill to other parts of the organization – Doug Collins looks at the skills your innovators are now developing and how they can be repurposed and extended.
Social creativity is on the rise, driven by tools that enable us to create value through tweets, blogs, wikis, videos and other empowering technologies, says George Por.
Twitter is a great tool for serendipity. How can you increase your odds of bumping up against great ideas there that you can potentially use in your business?
President Obama ‘crowdsourced’ a part of his political agenda with his change.gov initiative, which embraced the conversation and allowed users to identify topics that were important to them and vote on their relative importance. The addition of social media tools and philosophy to the mix resulted in a perfectly ordered list of the political issues that mattered most to US citizens.
Twitter can be a powerful tool for developing breakthrough ideas. In fact, it's one of the best tools for exposing you to new ideas, insights and trends. Unfortunately, it has gained a reputation as a place where narcissistic people talk about the glorious minutiae of their lives - such as, "Guess what I'm having for breakfast?" There is some of that, of course, but it is also a vibrant community where people share some amazing ideas and resources.
