(2015-06-11) How Twitter Users Can Generate Better Ideas

How Twitter Users Can Generate Better Ideas (idea generation). The more diverse a person’s social network, the more likely that person is to be innovative.

Can Twitter make employees more innovative? In particular, does having a greater diversity of virtual Twitter connections mean that good ideas are more likely to surface, as in the face-to-face world? To answer this question, we used a technique called organizational network analysis (ONA) to create visual representations of employee Twitter networks

We analyzed hundreds of ideas submitted by EMC employees as part of their internal idea management system and correlated that behavior with Twitter usage

Twitter users and non-users generally submitted the same number of ideas. However, the ideas of Twitter users were rated significantly more positively by other employees and experts than the ideas of non-users.

We used ONA to analyze employees’ Twitter network structures, calculating measures for both network diversity (for example, compactness) and size (for instance, number of followers).

We can determine this level of diversity mathematically by using the compactness ratio, which measures the degree to which people in the network are connected to each other.

Just exposing oneself to diverse fields, opinions and beliefs on Twitter by itself is not sufficient to enhance innovativeness. Additional capabilities are needed to ensure that the ideas triggered via Twitter can be transformed into actual innovative outcomes. To identify what these complementary capabilities are, we conducted 205 interviews

Through the interviews, we found that individual absorptive capacity — the ability of employees to identify, assimilate and exploit new ideas — is critical

An idea scout is an employee who looks outside the organization to bring in new ideas. An idea connector, meanwhile, is someone who can assimilate the external ideas and find opportunities within the organization to implement these new concepts. In our research, Twitter users who performed the two roles at the same time were the most innovative.

Although employees A and B follow approximately the same number of Twitter accounts, A’s network is far more diverse than B’s. For the most part, the people employee A follows are not following each other, which is more conducive to innovation and better idea generation. Compact Twitter networks like employee B’s provide redundant information and are less conducive to ideation.