Introduction

The following paper reviews the use of social media in innovation and the leadership issues that need to be addressed to reap the rewards of a social business.

The following are the areas that this paper briefly covers: -

• - The place of social media in the innovation process.
• - How social media impacts the research that drives the innovation process.
• - Leadership and social media within the innovation process.
• - How management should harness social media to manage the innovation process and risks.
• - Can using social media in the innovation process provide competitive advantage?
• - Will using social media in the innovation process reduce time to market?
• - Impacts on ROI and risk.
• - The impact of the above on the brand both inside and outside.

 
The main argument in this paper is that social media has become an enabler and enhancer of innovation inside companies. To take advantage of this the organisation needs to change its culture and way of working. New tools and a new mind set are required. The status quo in management thinking has had a paradigm shift and leaders need to re-think their approaches and style to change and adapt their culture so it can take advantage of this opportunity.
 
The innovation process needs to be hard-wired into the digital and social media communication channels. This will allow companies to use the insights, structured and unstructured data, which is held inside of the employee, consumer and stakeholder spheres.

Not so long ago, when communication was glacial in its movement the whole thing was different. We now live in the social media age. The innovation process should be viewed as enterprise wide social innovation. The new culture needs to establish an open environment that welcomes ideas, collaboration, contribution and evaluation.
 

• - How does this fit inside of corporate portfolio management?
• - What changes in leadership style and skills are required?
• - How is this managed and facilitated throughout the organisation together with 2nd and 3rd party corporate suppliers involved in the innovation and delivery of any products/services?
• - How is the process wrapped together to create new products, services, systems and procedures that can be capitalised on.
• - How is down side risk managed?
• - What are the real threats?

 
The major risk of not being adaptive, engaging and developing into an enterprise 2 social organisation is that your competitors will. They will create more organisational energy that will flow to the brand and drive stronger brand advocacy. They will have an energised, lively and engaged culture that is adaptive and will out-innovate you in all facets of their business. Their time to market will be reduced and they will benefit from reduced costs and better management of risk through closer team collaboration and communications…………………….

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