How Companies Can Use Social Media for Innovation
With its vast tentacles stretching right across the globe, social media has become a valuable tool for companies to spread the word about their products and services.
Smart consumer-facing organizations also establish their authority and credibility by supplying their social audiences with lots of free, valuable content.
But social media can also play another prominent role in business, and that’s innovation.
Working with consumers, suppliers and other external partners via social media can lead to innovative products (for example Nivea’s Invisible for Black and White, a revolutionary new deodorant) and give enterprises considerable advantages over their competitors.
Four Principles
An article in CMS Wire, offers four essential principles for companies that are using or thinking of using social platforms for innovation. With most executives polled in a 2013 PwC survey expecting innovation to drive a substantial portion of their revenue growth, reaching out to external knowledge sources is seen as vital.
Social networks are not an innovation panacea, and the article cautions readers not to expect a social platform alone to lead the innovation process. But social does come with some considerable benefits and they offer more than traditional external approaches such as focus groups and market research.
The four principles outlined in the article are:
1) Design social interactions as business processes
2) Create an environment of trust and engagement
3) Build effective leadership teams
4) A well-planned implementation strategy is key to success
To read the article in full including explanations of each of the four principles, click here.
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