Posts Tagged ‘technical implementation
Social network driven innovation process
To bring a sustainable or disruptive innovation to a market, companies generally follow eight steps (or some variation of these steps appropriate to their particular business).
- idea generation
- idea screening
- concept development
- concept testing
- business analysis
- beta testing and market testing
- technical implementation
- commercialization and continuous improvements
Every step of the innovation process is an intensely social interaction between company collaborators (technicians, marketers, salespeople, financial analysts, executives, distributers, present customers, potential customers, opinion leaders and others), and hard analytical work. Although the steps are represented as an orderly sequence with checkpoints and feedback loops, the process does not have to be so orderly. In fact, in a vast number of cases the sequence is shortened by a creative insight that jumpstarts some of these steps. Nevertheless, even with these short-cuts, the majority of companies that pursue R&D projects more or less follow this general innovation process.
The clouds represent open social interactions with customers, potential customers, non customers, distributers, opinion leaders and all levels of company collaborators. Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others with similar characteristics are ideal for promoting this type of open social interaction. Many companies are already using these online communities for this purpose, in combination with their webpages and specific blogs.