How Twitter Users Can Generate Better Ideas

SUMMER 2015 New research suggests that employees with a diverse Twitter network — one that exposes them to people and ideas they don’t already know — tend to generate better ideas.

Salvatore Parise Eoin Whelan Steve Todd

Vol. 56, No. 4 Reprint #56411 http://mitsmr.com/1KIZnUk DIGITAL BUSINESS: INNOVATION How Twitter Users Can Generate Better Ideas

New research suggests that employees with a diverse Twitter THE LEADING network — one that exposes them to people and ideas they QUESTION Can Twitter don’t already know — tend to generate better ideas. help employ- BY SALVATORE PARISE, EOIN WHELAN AND STEVE TODD ees become more innovative?

INNOVATIONS NEVER HAPPEN without good ideas. But what prompts people to come up FINDINGS with their best ideas? It’s hard to beat old-fashioned, face-to-face networking. Even Steve Jobs, Overall, employees who used Twitter renowned for his digital evangelism, recognized the importance of social interaction in achieving had better ideas than those who innovation. In his role as CEO of Pixar Animation Studios (a role he held in addition to being a didn’t. cofounder and CEO of Apple Inc.), Jobs instructed the architect of Pixar’s new headquarters to design In particular, there was a link between physical space that encouraged staff to get out of their offices and mingle, particularly with those with the amount of diver- whom they normally wouldn’t interact. Jobs believed that serendipitous exchanges fueled innovation.1 sity in employees’ Twitter networks A multitude of empirical studies confirm what Jobs intuitively knew.2 The more diverse a per- and the quality of son’s social network, the more likely that person is to be innovative. A diverse network provides their ideas. Twitter users who exposure to people from different fields who behave and think differently. Good ideas emerge when combined idea the new information received is combined with what a person already knows. But in today’s digi- scouting and idea connecting were the tally connected world, many relationships are formed and maintained online through public social most innovative.

COMPARING TWO TWITTER NETWORKS 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.

Employee A’s Twitter Network Employee B’s Twitter Network

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media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and For example, EMC Corporation, a leading com- LinkedIn. Increasingly, employees are using such pany in the information storage and infrastructure platforms for work-related purposes.3 industry that is based in Hopkinton, Massachu- setts, was one of the companies we studied. We Studying Twitter Networks analyzed hundreds of ideas submitted by EMC em- Can Twitter make employees more innovative? In ployees as part of their internal idea management particular, does having a greater diversity of system and correlated that behavior with Twitter virtual Twitter connections mean that good ideas usage. Here’s what we found. are more likely to surface, as in the face-to-face First, Twitter users and non-users generally sub- world? To answer this question, we used a tech- mitted the same number of ideas. However, the ideas nique called organizational network analysis of Twitter users were rated significantly more posi- (ONA) to create visual representations of em- tively by other employees and experts than the ideas ployee Twitter networks. We studied ten employee of non-users. Raters could only see the ideas them- groups across five companies in a range of indus- selves, not who submitted them. The anonymity tries. (See “About the Research.”) prevents raters from making judgments based on the source of an idea instead of on its intrinsic merit. ABOUT THE RESEARCH Second, in analyzing the structure of each em- This paper draws on a five-year program of research we conducted to understand the ployee’s Twitter network, we found that there was a impacts of technology-mediated networks enabled by social platforms on employee positive relationship between the amount of diver- innovation. We studied both internally focused platforms that contain rich social fea- tures such as employee profiles and social navigation and external platforms including sity in one’s Twitter network and the quality of Twitter. Networks among employees were created based on different levels of en- ideas submitted. However, Twitter activity and size gagement, such as following someone on Twitter or replying to someone’s tweet. measures (such as the number of tweets, number of We used two main research methodologies: Organizational network analysis followers and number of people followed) were not (ONA) and interviews. ONA is a set of techniques for studying the connections and correlated with personal innovation. resource flows between people, teams and organizations. Using ONA, social relationships are viewed as nodes and links that can be described visually and mathematically. We can explain these findings further by examin- Using these methods, researchers and executives can gain new insights into existing ing the Twitter sociograms of two EMC employees. network structures and communication patterns. (See “Comparing Two Twitter Networks,” p. 21.) In We used ONA to analyze employees’ Twitter network structures, calculating mea- the diagrams, circles represent Twitter users, and an sures for both network diversity (for example, compactness) and size (for instance, number of followers). We used the NodeXL software tool to extract employees’ external arrow from one user to another user indicates that the Twitter network data and the UCINET software tool to do the network analysis. Measures first user is following the second user on Twitter. Even of individual innovation had to be customized somewhat depending on the company con- though both employees A and B follow approximately text, but they typically involved observed measures such as the number and quality of the same number of Twitter accounts, A’s network is ideas or papers generated, or supervisor ratingsi of employees using validated innovation survey items. In the EMC company example, we measured personal innovation by the far more diverse than B’s. That is to say, the people number of positive votes employees received for the ideas they submitted. whom employee A follows on Twitter are, for the most In all, we did ONA analysis of ten groups across five organizations from various part, not following each other. We can determine this industry segments, including consulting, technology, manufacturing, consumer food level of diversity mathematically by using the com- products and higher education. We included controls, such as a non-Twitter group, and pactness ratio, which measures the degree to which employee tenure and level. Using statistical techniques such as analysis of variance (ANOVA), we looked at the relationship between an employee’s Twitter usage, his or people in the network are connected to each other. her network structure and various measures of innovative performance. The ONA For employee A, the network’s compactness ratio is projects generally showed similar patterns and had sample sizes of between 30 and quite low, at 18%. Our research found that loose Twit- 80 employees who used Twitter. At EMC, we analyzed a network of 67 employees ter networks, such as employee A’s, are better for who used Twitter and a control group of 80 employees who did not use Twitter. Overall, we interviewed 205 employees with different technology network struc- ideation, because the potential for accessing a diver- tures to understand how they used Twitter to be more creative. The semi-structured gent set of ideas is greater. By contrast, employee B’s interviews lasted between 45 and 60 minutes. The interviews focused on the Twitter Twitter network is compact: People in employee B’s strategies and tactics the employees used to acquire and validate new ideas external network mostly follow each other, resulting in a com- to their organizations, which they then shared to the rest of the organization. We ana- pactness ratio of 82%. Such cohesive networks lyzed the content of the interviews to create an initial individual absorptive capacity construct, which we found to be a key factor in predicting employees who were suc- provide more redundant information, which our re- cessfully using external social platforms, such as Twitter, for innovation. search shows is negatively correlated with ideation.

22 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW SUMMER 2015 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU USING TWITTER TO SPUR INNOVATION 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.

TWITTER ROLE WHY THIS ROLE IS IMPORTANT TACTICS FOR SUCCESS Idea Scout •Identifies external ideas from experts and resources •Use ‘breadcrumb’ method to build out Twitter network. on Twitter •Prune to keep Twitter network up-to-date. •Diversity of employee’s Twitter network is conducive •Continue Twitter conversations in face-to-face settings. to innovation •Converts weak ties to strong ties, especially for complex ideas Idea Connector •Identifies business opportunities from Twitter ideas •Use an in-house blog to disseminate Twitter ideas to a •Directs relevant Twitter ideas to business stakeholders wide company audience. •Curates Twitter ideas and matches them with company •Corroborate technical information with internal experts. resources needed to implement them •Train change agents within the company on effective Twitter network development and idea-sharing strategies.

What’s more, although we’re using EMC as an exam- performed the two roles at the same time were the most ple in this article, we found similar results in the other innovative. (See “Using Twitter to Spur Innovation.”) companies we studied, suggesting these general find- While the following examples and quotations ings are not specific to one industry or company. come from EMC employees (unless otherwise noted), we heard many comments like this across Idea Scout and Idea Connector our entire sample. Here are the common themes Just exposing oneself to diverse fields, opinions and that emerged from the interviews: beliefs on Twitter by itself is not sufficient to enhance innovativeness. Additional capabilities are needed to 1. Use Twitter to become an idea scout. Several ensure that the ideas triggered via Twitter can be employees described Twitter as a “gateway to solution transformed into actual innovative outcomes. To options” and a way to obtain different perspectives identify what these complementary capabilities are, and to challenge one’s current thinking. One engi- we conducted 205 interviews with Twitter users across neer, for example, was able to improve the speed of a the ten groups in our sample. Through the interviews, suite of the company’s products thanks to a tweet we found that individual absorptive capacity4 — the from a technology guru about Web app performance; ability of employees to identify, assimilate and exploit the tweet provided information about when and new ideas — is critical for employees to build and where bottlenecks were occurring. Other employees learn from their Twitter networks. This means that if leveraged Twitter to obtain best practices from indus- you are a Twitter user with the goal of improving try experts about customer advocacy programs such your innovation performance, you need to maintain as loyalty initiatives. Several others mentioned how a diverse network while also developing your infor- they improved personal productivity by following mation assimilation and exploitation skills. early technology adopters on Twitter to learn about In particular, two activities emerged as being signifi- new tools they were using in the workplace. cantly correlated with increasing individual absorptive So who do you follow if your goal is to find quality capacity and personal innovation: “idea scouting” and ideas? Interviewees said you need to be tactical: It’s “idea connecting.” In an earlier paper that two of us co- not the number of people you follow on Twitter that authored, we defined an idea scout as an employee who matters; it’s the diversity within your Twitter network. looks outside the organization to bring in new ideas. An This view was echoed by a senior technologist: idea connector, meanwhile, is someone who can assimilate the external ideas and find opportunities “I don’t necessarily want to follow more people. I within the organization to implement these new con- just want to follow people whose opinions don’t cepts.5 In this study, we found that Twitter users who always align with my own, which is kind of an

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ongoing battle because after a year or so of follow- Employees can use Twitter as a way to move from ing the same people, you find that your opinions weak ties to strong ties with experts. Although pub- shift and morph a little, and suddenly you are lic social platforms are effective at establishing weak with a homogenous group of people again.” ties (in other words, people you are familiar with but do not know well), strong ties are needed to Several employees referred to a “breadcrumb” transfer complex product knowledge.6 Engagement method to find industry subject-matter experts and on the platform (such as replies, retweets and men- influencers on Twitter who will challenge their think- tions) often leads to face-to-face meetings. In those ing. After a period of “listening” to colleagues and cases, Twitter acts as a natural icebreaker. Alterna- industry leaders who are on the platform — including tively, relationships with experts you meet in person what they are tweeting about, who they are following or know from your workplace can be extended on or replying to on the platform, and who is being Twitter. One engineer explained how a series of retweeted often — these employees said they eventu- Twitter conversations with a software developer at ally find the people they want to follow and engage another company led to a face-to-face meeting. with on Twitter. The key is to listen first and then as- Eventually, their relationship gave rise to a rich col- semble the right people for your Twitter network. laborative effort on several technology projects One HR professional we interviewed disclosed between the two companies. how she follows a 70/30 rule to blend serendipity into Often, the conversations with experts on Twitter her Twitter network: While 70% of the people she fol- are particularly pertinent before and after a face-to- lows are people directly relevant to her work, 30% are face event such as an industry conference. One outside her comfort zone. The outside portion is de- engineer commented on the value of engaging with signed to challenge her existing beliefs and includes selected colleagues on Twitter before meeting them sources not connected to HR. Several employees for the first time at a conference, noting: mentioned virtual connections to the thoughts of individuals such as former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, “I felt I had known this person for a while, even astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and science com- though we had never met. After reading and mentator Bill Nye as catalysts for good ideas — even replying to his tweets and blog posts, I had though those individuals were not directly involved done my due diligence.” with the work the employees were doing. Several employees spoke about the importance of 2. Use Twitter to be an idea connector. Several keeping their Twitter networks up-to-date. A pruning employees mentioned how important it is to have a strategy is necessary since people’s topic interests strategy for sharing Twitter content with the appro- change. Pruning also allows employees to eliminate priate internal stakeholders. They described their redundancy. In addition to monitoring their net- roles as listener, curator and alerter. As one employee works for relevancy, employees also monitor the explained: frequency of the tweets of people they follow to determine if they are still active or if they can be removed “I try to sift through all the Twitter content from from the network. Several people we talked to noted my network and look for trends and relation- that they considered Twitter to be different from email ships between topics. I then put my analysis and other information sources in that it enables con- and interpretation on it. I feel that’s where my tinuous engagement and conversation with experts. value-add is. I’m not just sending out a bunch As one community manager commented: of links. I think through what might be valuable to particular groups such as marketing or engi- “Twitter allows your battery life to last longer. I neering. This leads to engaging discussion.” will only follow people that will tweet and reply in a timely fashion. So, the people I follow on One Twitter user created a “business analytics” Twitter have to be social and willing to share, list so he could track various experts on analytics. in addition to being an expert or interesting.” He filtered specific subsets of the topic for different

24 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW SUMMER 2015 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU stakeholders within his group. For example, the Salvatore Parise is an associate professor of informa- marketing team was interested in websites and in- tion systems at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Eoin Whelan is a lecturer in business store analytical best practices, tools and ROI information systems at the J.E. Cairnes School of metrics. He was able to take the latest findings and Business & Economics at the National University of translate the material he found to fit that group’s Ireland, Galway, in Galway, Ireland. Steve Todd is vice president of strategy and innovation at EMC Cor- work processes. The HR group, for its part, was in- poration in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Comment on terested in talent management analytics, but its this article at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/x/56411, or understanding of analytics was less developed than contact the authors at [email protected]. the marketing group’s understanding. This meant that in order to be an effective idea connector, he REFERENCES had to be savvy in terms of whom to approach 1. W. Isaacson, “Steve Jobs” (New York: Simon & Schus- within the HR group — for example, early adopters ter, 2011): 431. of new analytical technologies or HR managers 2. Ron Burt’s seminal study on structural holes has proven to be influential in explaining how people accrue advan- receptive to new practices. tages from their social network. Gaps in a social network, Effective Twitter users also understand the called structural holes, create brokerage opportunities. importance of disseminating ideas to a broader People on either side of the hole circulate in different flows of information, and benefits accrue to those individ- company audience. Several users mentioned that uals whose relationships span the structural hole. See they create social dashboards or company blogs R.S. Burt, “Structural Holes: The Social Structure of based on the insights they get from Twitter. One Competition” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Press, 1992). employee at a food products company mentioned: 3. See, for example, N.G. Barnes, A.M. Lescault and K.D. Augusto, “LinkedIn Dominates, Twitter Trends and Face- “I had been following health and fitness expert book Falls: The 2014 Inc. 500 and Social Media,” research Twitter accounts. I blogged about some of the report conducted by The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2015, latest lifestyle trends and how this might im- www.umassd.edu/cmr/socialmediaresearch/2015fortune pact how we target millennials. Most of our 500andsocialmedia. existing customer base is in the 40- to 70-year- 4. Coined by Wesley M. Cohen and Daniel A. Levinthal, old demographic, who have some different the term “absorptive capacity” refers to an organization’s ability to assimilate and replicate new knowledge attitudes, knowledge and behaviors towards gained from external sources. A substantial body of fitness than millennials. These blogs generated research demonstrates that absorptive capacity contrib- lots of comments and discussion.” utes directly and indirectly to company performance. See W.M. Cohen and D.A. Levinthal, “Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innova- Finding ways to share Twitter content with work tion,” Administrative Science Quarterly 35, no. 1 colleagues is also critical since many employees, (March 1990): 128-152. especially baby boomers, don’t use the platform 5. E. Whelan, S. Parise, J. De Valk and R. Aalbers, “Creating Employee Networks That Deliver Open Innovation,” MIT themselves. Other employees mentioned the impor- Sloan Management Review 53, no. 1 (fall 2011): 37-44. tance of corroborating the technical information 6. M.T. Hansen, “Knowledge Networks: Explaining obtained from Twitter with other colleagues to dis- Effective Knowledge Sharing in Multiunit Companies,” cuss its validity and relevance. Organization Science 13, no. 3 (May-June 2002): 232-248. A number of Twitter users were so positive about i. The supervisor rating questions include: “Please rate your level of agreement with the following statements: its potential value that they took it upon themselves (1 =strongly disagree to 6 =strongly agree): (1) This person to train their colleagues through webinars and one- generates creative work-related ideas. (2) This person pro- on-one or small-group sessions on how to use the motes and champions work-related ideas to others.” These two items are adapted from: S.G. Scott and R.A. Bruce, platform effectively. The training sessions were not “Determinants of Innovative Behavior: A Path Model of solely about the technical aspects of Twitter, which Individual Innovation in the Workplace,” Academy of were easy to grasp, but also about ways to increase Management Journal 37, no. 3 (June 1994): 580-607. effective absorptive capacity by identifying relevant Reprint 56411. external expertise and making it meaningful to com- Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. pany stakeholders so it can be implemented. All rights reserved.

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