Social Innovation, a grassroots approach to innovation management, is proving to be a valuable complement to traditional, top-down methodologies of managing innovation. It is, however, relatively new and inherently less structured than traditional methodologies. As a result, innovation leaders often find it difficult to measure performance and evaluate health of their innovation communities. This presentation first defines social innovation. It then defines a set of social metrics that can be measured and used as the leading indicators of success of social innovation efforts.

1. OPTIMIZING SOCIAL
INNOVATION
Padmanabh Dabke
nabh@spigit.com
Twitter: @nabhulous
Blog: http://blog.nabhulo.us

2. The Cereal Innovator

3. The Cereal Innovator
 Idea originally proposed by a facility manager
 Evolved based on input from other employees
and market research
 Took 3 years to develop – most of the time spent
searching for the concept

4. Social Innovation
Bottom-Up approach to innovation that relies on business
communities to propose, evolve, filter, and rank ideas in order
to improve the top line (new products & markets), the bottom
line (cost savings, process efficiencies) and everything in
between (employee morale, customer satisfaction)

5. Flavors of Open Innovation
Transparency

6. Open Is Now Possible: Technology &
Culture of Openness
6
Table Excerpt from
A Whole New Mind
- BY DANIEL H.
PINK
Table Excerpt from
A Whole New Mind
- BY DANIEL
H. PINK

7. Stop the Brain Drain

8. Solve the HiPPO Problem
8

9. The Innovation Funnel

10. Online Community Measurements
10

11. Framing Ideation
Source: Growth Alchemy, Mehrdad Baghai and Jeff Chan of McKinsey & Co. 2000

12. Improving Ideation Efficiency
Community
Campaigns
Themes
Strategic
Direction
 Ideation Index – Number
of ideas per user in a
given time frame
 Needs dedicated
innovation team as
brokers
 Must have a buy-in from
P&L owners
 Must provide direction
without stifling creativity

13. Extending the Reach
 Ranges from up to 20%
for larger communities
to 80% for smaller
campaigns
 Must establish
credibility
 Proper bootstrapping
is crucial
 Initial and mid-
campaign
communication
Soft
Launch
Word of
Mouth
Official
Launch
First
Event
Second
Event
Reach: Ratio of number of site visitors to
the total potential number of users

14. Going Beyond 90-9-1 Rule
0.00%
20.00%
40.00%
60.00%
80.00%
100.00%
120.00%
12
57
81
122
174
286
398
771
1078
1647
3204
6123
Active
Occasional
Lurkers
Innovation Communities: 62.2-37.5-0.3

15. Incentives for Improving
Participation
LEADERBOARD IMPLEMENTATION
MONETARY
REWARD
PROFIT
SHARING
RECOGNITION PRIVILEGE
SPONSOR
INNOVATOR
CO-CREATOR
EXPERT
CONNECTOR
CHEERLEADER

16. Ensuring Quality
Participation

17. Collaboration Long Tail
17
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
1
419
837
1255
1673
2091
2509
2927
3345
The Ideation LongTail
Collaborators

18. Improving Collaboration
Context-Aware Presentation

19. Improving Collaboration
Content-Based Information Routing

20. Improving Collaboration
Ubiquitous Innovation

21. Enhancing Stickiness
 Offer multiple reasons
to visit the site
 Ideation, blogging,
discussing trends
 Maintain continuity
 Keep it dynamic
 Engineer short term
events
 Short term challenges,
seasons
Community
Campaigns
Themes
Strategic
Direction

22. Enhancing Stickiness
Gamify your community

23. Idea Evaluation & Ranking
 Scaling up requires
leveraging the crowd
for filtering and
ranking of ideas
 Encourage
discrimination
 Factor in user
reputation
 Consider use of idea
markets

24. Final Thoughts
 Questions have changed from “why should
we…” to “How do we…”
 Key concerns
 Inherently chaotic nature of online communities/
social networks
 Confidentiality and originality of information
 Security
 SaaS – the preferred implementation model

25. Final Thoughts
 The need to provide incremental rewards and
recognition is universally accepted
 Strategies range from virtual store purchases to a
fixed mapping to real currency
 A variety of approaches and philosophies
 Short lived problem solving sessions to ongoing
ideation
 Fully transparent to complete anonymity
 Extent of “democratization” varies greatly