Ten Questions to Answer Before Using Social Tools for Product Innovation

Social media is an efficient tool for conveying marketing messages and receiving customer feedback. Besides outbound marketing, social media can also be implemented for inbound marketing to create, refine and share new product ideas. To leverage social communities in product innovation, here are ten questions companies should consider before initiating social innovation. These include assessing the organization's maturity in social media use, executive involvement, defined objectives, social community management expertise, technology investment, innovation processes, responsiveness to new ideas, quality ways of capturing ideas, recognition, and reward for social innovation success. Companies can use a free tool for assessing their social innovation readiness.