This exploratory study extends the conceptual space of open innovation. We build on previous work recognising opportunities to contribute to a firm's innovation processes, particularly ideation, from the external environment. Initially, scholarship focused on users’ intimate knowledge of a firm’s products and services such as suppliers and lead users. More recently, affordances of digital technologies have broadened the scope of contributors to include, for example, crowdsourcing. We go a step further and consider the often-overlooked group ‘non-users’. Specifically, employing a novel two-stage approach incorporating network visualization based on 7607 Instagram #innovation posts supplemented by qualitative analysis, we explore the contribution non-users might make to firms’ innovation activities. Findings suggest that nonusers conceptualise innovation as problem solving but represent it through ludic and utopic narratives. The value of non-users in the innovation process is not in addressing specific technical problems but in offering a new lens through which to appreciate the phenomenon of innovation itself.

Social media representations of innovation by nonusers: everyday problem solving.

Rebecca Pera
2021-01-01

Abstract

This exploratory study extends the conceptual space of open innovation. We build on previous work recognising opportunities to contribute to a firm's innovation processes, particularly ideation, from the external environment. Initially, scholarship focused on users’ intimate knowledge of a firm’s products and services such as suppliers and lead users. More recently, affordances of digital technologies have broadened the scope of contributors to include, for example, crowdsourcing. We go a step further and consider the often-overlooked group ‘non-users’. Specifically, employing a novel two-stage approach incorporating network visualization based on 7607 Instagram #innovation posts supplemented by qualitative analysis, we explore the contribution non-users might make to firms’ innovation activities. Findings suggest that nonusers conceptualise innovation as problem solving but represent it through ludic and utopic narratives. The value of non-users in the innovation process is not in addressing specific technical problems but in offering a new lens through which to appreciate the phenomenon of innovation itself.
2021
The ISPIM Innovation Conference – Innovating Our Common Future
Berlino - Germania
20–23 Giugno
LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications
LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications
1
27
978-952-335-467-8
innovation; social media; non-users, Instagram; images; ludic; utopic
Richard Adams; Sarah Quinton; Rebecca Pera
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2318/1805683
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