How Twitter Users Can Generate Better Ideas Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

What prompts people to come up with their greatest ideas? In achieving innovation, even Steve Jobs, renowned for his digital evangelism, recognized the importance of social interaction in achieving innovation. As CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, Jobs explicitly instructed the architect of Pixar’s new headquarters to design physical space that encouraged staff to get out of their offices. Jobs believed that serendipitous exchanges released creative juices that fueled innovation. Empirical studies support what Jobs intuitively knew. The more diverse a person's social network, the more likely that person will be progressive. A diversified network provides exposure to individuals from different fields who behave and think differently.

Can Twitter make employees more innovative? Does having more diversity in one's virtual connections mean that great thoughts are more prone to surface in the face to face universe? The authors examined employee Twitter networks, to answer this question. EMC Corporation, a leading business in the information storage and infrastructure industry, was one of the five businesses the writers studied, analyzing hundreds of ideas submitted by EMC workers. The researchers found that while Twitter users and non-users normally submitted the same amount of thoughts, the ideas of Twitter users were rated significantly more favorably by other workers and pros compared to the notions of non-users.

On the other hand, the writers argue that just exposing oneself to beliefs, views and different fields on Twitter by itself is insufficient to improve innovativeness. Additional skills are needed to make sure that the thoughts triggered via Twitter would be transformed into real progressive outcomes. A critical skill is individual absorptive capability -the ability of workers to identify, assimilate and use new ideas. Two activities closely linked with raising individual absorptive capacity and private innovation are "idea scouting, "which entails looking outside the organization for new ideas, and "thought connecting, "which calls for finding opportunities within the organization to implement the new concepts. The writers found that Twitter users who performed both roles were the most progressive.

This is just an excerpt. This case is about INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP

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