Social media as an interface of innovation processes - Presentation of professor Hannu Kärkkäinen (Tampere University of Technology, NOVI research Center) in TEKES Innovation Research Seminar in Finlandia House, Helsinki (22.11.2012)
Social media as an interface of innovation processes
1. Professor Hannu Kärkkäinen
Tampere University of Technology
22.11.2012 9.30-17.00
HELSINKI , FINLANDIA HOUSE
PANEL 1: BOOSTING USER-DRIVEN
INNOVATION IN BUSINESS?
’SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN
INTERFACE OF INNOVATION PROCESSES’
2. 1. BACKGROUND AND MAIN OBJECTIVES
PROJECT “SOITA”
SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE CREATION OF CUSTOMER UNDERSTANDING
IN BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS COMPANIES
Major research questions of TUT:
1. How can social media be used in the creation of new customer and
user understanding in Business-to-Business context in the
different phases of the innovation process?
2. What types of best social media practices are there in the
innovation process of B-to-B companies, and how could these be
applied in Finnish B-to-B companies?
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3. 2. MAIN RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS (SEE WEB LINKS)
• Demonstrated, despite earlier common doubts, that social media can be used and has
been used beneficially in the customer interface of B2B companies’ innovation process
in various innovative ways to create new customer understanding
• Customer understanding was found to be created and extractable in B2B context by
large variety of social media approaches, very different types of interaction forms, from
various types of stakeholders, and by combining social media innovatively with design
toolkits, configurators, virtual worlds and other means
• Carried out the first extensive quantitative investigations about Finnish B2B and
Technology Industry companies’ social media- related challenges, current use rates,
various ways of using, and experienced benefits
• Broke various myths and misunderstandings of social media use both internally and
with customers, utilizing mainly Finnish companies as illustrative examples
• Demonstrated that crowdsourcing is possible in various ways not only in consumer
sector (as presumed) but also in B2B relationships and development of B2B products
• Created various models and approaches to help B2B companies to better adopt and
utilize social media to create customer understanding in innovation (e.g. Social
Customer Learning model, maturity models)
• Co-founded of some of the first extensive collaborative forums (SMAT, CMAD, CMF, one
public collection of B2B-social media cases in sosiaalinenmedia.org wiki) for social
media and community researchers and other interested parties in Finland
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4. 3. IMPLICATIONS TO INNOVATION
POLICY, COMPANIES AND OTHER
ACTORS
• Novel ways of collaboration and multi-stakeholder value creation in
TEKES- funded research projects (companies, consultants, interest
groups); experiments
• Need to develop IPR-practices and even legislation to facilitate
social media- supported B2B collaboration in innovation
• Need to develop information and knowledge security practices and
policies, which balance risks and opportunities of social media use
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5. 4. NOVEL TRENDS, CHALLENGES,
OPPORTUNITIES AND RESEARCH
NEEDS?
• Instead of internal and marketing use, using social media as real
enabler of knowledge co-creation in B2B relationships
• Integration of enterprise information systems and social media
• Development and integration of modern IT , e.g. 3D technologies
and user toolkits with social media enabled communities
• Development of value creation and business models for B2B social
media use
• Further information, and reports referred to in this presentation:
http://www.tut.fi/soita/
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