Communicating for Innovation: The “Social” Enterprise and the Translation of Novel Ideas

The process of innovation involves at least three stages: leveraging knowledge to generate ideas (idea creation), communicating about the adequacy of novel ideas to the top management based on the firm’s strategic objectives (idea translation) and actually making innovative products and processes a reality (idea implementation). This chapter explores the channels and the conditions under which social media can improve the innovation process in enterprises. The analysis is based on a multi-disciplinary review of academic literature to explore how social media can impact the first two stages of innovation: the creation and the translation of ideas. The findings are complemented by data collected from a survey about the uses of social media in private companies and by insights drawn from case studies of multinational companies that analyze the readiness of organizations to benefit from social media use. The central argument of this chapter is that social media help create “narratives” of innovation that provide companies with a common and clear innovation strategy for realizing the maximum potential from novel ideas. Organizations can be understood as ‘networks of conversations’ and much of the actual doing of strategy and innovation in organizations takes place via the process of sense-making across teams and business networks and communities. There are at least three channels in which the corporate use of social media can help the innovation process: by connecting people, which helps produce and communicate knowledge; by creating a new mindset, in which people are more engaged and willing to innovate; and by making sense of knowledge in the context of the firm overall strategy. These benefits can only occur when the use of social media is complemented with organizational enablers such as structural decentralization and individual empowerment.