PANEL 1: BOOSTING USER-DRIVEN

INNOVATION IN BUSINESS?’SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN

INTERFACE OF INNOVATION PROCESSES’

22.11.2012 9.30-17.00

HELSINKI , FINLANDIA HOUSE

Professor Hannu Kärkkäinen

Tampere University of Technology

23.11.2012NOVI RESEARCH CENTER 2

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?

1. BACKGROUND AND MAIN OBJECTIVES

23.11.2012NOVI RESEARCH CENTER 3

• 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 worldsand 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

2. MAIN RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS (SEE WEB LINKS)

23.11.2012NOVI RESEARCH CENTER 4

• 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

3. IMPLICATIONS TO INNOVATION

POLICY, COMPANIES AND OTHER

ACTORS

23.11.2012NOVI RESEARCH CENTER 5

• 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/

4. NOVEL TRENDS, CHALLENGES,

OPPORTUNITIES AND RESEARCH

NEEDS?