Social Strategy to Gain Knowledge for Innovation

Abstract

Taking the knowledge‐based view of the firm as its starting point, and acknowledging that knowledge can lie outside the firm, this research extends our understanding of how the growing social media trend can contribute to open innovation. It focuses specifically on small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), which tend to be resource constrained and might benefit particularly from leveraging social media platforms. The authors bring forward the notion that people flock to social media because they are motivated by a desire for social interaction. Indeed, the findings suggest that SMEs that put effort into connecting customers on social media – which the authors refer to as having a ‘social strategy’ – are likely to reap both customers’ involvement in innovation on social media and new knowledge of value for innovation. Examining differences between social media platforms used primarily for personal purposes and those used primarily for professional purposes, the authors find that a social strategy is more effective in the first category than in the second. This probably reflects differences in the social identities that people adopt on these two types of social media platforms.

Overcoming the monetization challenge in freemium online games

“…While the role of community has been widely recognized and is typically viewed as positively related to WtP (Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001;Algesheimer et al, 2010), our findings offer a more nuanced perspective. In line with Oestreicher-Singer and Zalmanson (2013) and Candi et al (2018) our overall findings suggest that as individuals become more connected to a community, their WtP increases. Meanwhile, qualitative analysis reveals a separation between sociallyoriented and achievement-oriented users, adding empirical evidence to support Bartle's (1996) observations in early online communities.…”

“…This is problematic, since it places the drivers of loyalty and WtP increasingly outside of service providers' direct control and highlights the expectation that service providers respond to the shift of power towards customers that the internet has created. Service providers offer a platform for user communities to form, but often the value comes more from the community itself than the service provider's efforts (Kuppelwieser et al, 2013;Candi et al, 2018).…”

“…Understanding what motivates virtual community members and drives behaviours is seen as vital (Roberts, et al, 2017), in order to understand and influence activities such as co-creation (Candi, et al, 2018;Marion, et al, 2016) and WtP. Mathwick (2002) divides behaviours into exchangeoriented and communally-oriented social norms.…”

Unpacking the social media–driven innovation capability: How consumer conversations turn into organizational innovations

“…social media based open innovation has so far built on the assumption that consumers intentionally generate content on social media to be used for innovation by organizations (Candi, Roberts, Marion, & Barczak, 2018;Schlagwein & Hu, 2017).…”

“…Prior research has usually either focused on the perceptions and motivations of consumers who contribute to organizational innovation efforts (Füller, Hutter, & Faullant, 2011;Füller, Mühlbacher, Matzler, & Jawecki, 2009) or the organizational benefits that flow from these focused collaborations (Candi et al, 2018;Piller & Walcher, 2006;Schlagwein & Bjørn-Andersen, 2014).…”