Social Product Innovation

Social media and social technologies are rapidly changing the way we communicate, collaborate and build relationships on a personal level. Yet companies struggle to find effective ways to take advantage of social technologies to enhance product innovation and product development processes.

Results from Kalypso research on Social Product Innovation show that while 70% of the companies we surveyed are using or planning to use social media for product innovation, only 33% of those have a formal strategy in place, while 21% are developing strategies. This means most companies are acting without a strategy in place.

From ideation and crowdsourcing at the front end of innovation, through enabling product development collaboration to post-launch support, Kalypso helps organizations develop an effective Social Product Innovation strategy that supports product development, innovation and business goals.

Social Product Innovation is an integrated approach to product development that includes innovation input from three categories in the “social” space:

  • Collaboration within an organization – In-house strategy and technologies (often called Enterprise 2.0 or E2.0)
  • Collaboration with external partners – Strategy and technologies that strategically engage key value partners outside the enterprise
  • Public networks – Strategy around public technologies like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc.

A comprehensive and sustainable social strategy must be developed to deliver desired results. Kalypso helps organizations address four critical phases to getting started with Social Product Innovation:

  1. Understand and Assess the Product Development Process
  2. Develop a Strategy Integrating Social Media
  3. Integrate Innovation Strategy with Internal and External Partners
  4. Implement Social Product Innovation (by prototype or full offering)

By combining social media evaluation with innovation expertise, Kalypso’s unique approach helps companies to focus the use of social media on supporting business and innovation strategy.