102
The Role of Social Networks in
Organizing Ideation, Creativity and
Innovation: An Introduction
Daniele Mascia, Mats Magnusson and Jennie Björk
Introduction
I n the light of intensified competition, tech-
nological complexity and institutional
instability, firms are increasingly inclined to
actively seek competitive advantage through
innovation. Consequently, the survival, profit-
ability and growth of organizations are in
most industries intimately related to their
innovative capabilities, i.e. the capacity to
combine resources needed to generate novel
and valuable products, processes, services,
business models and organizational forms.
These capabilities rely to a large extent on col-
lective actions, stressing that innovation is a
social activity where communication and
interaction play important roles (Leonard &
Sensiper, 1998). This has paved the way for a
perspective on innovation in which the previ-
ous primary focus on human and intellectual
capital increasingly needs to be complemented
with relational (Kale, Singh & Perlmutter,
2000) and social capital (Nahapiet & Ghoshal,
1998), underlining the importance that rela-
tionships and networks play for innovation.
The benefits of using external networks in
order to gain input to innovation have been
highlighted in the flourishing literature stream
on Open Innovation (Chesbrough, 2003).
Moreover, recent works have also pointed to
the potential gains residing in collaborative
networks between people inside organizations
(see, e.g., Björk & Magnusson, 2009).
Social networks have of course always
played a key role in innovation, creativity and
ideation. However, recent changes with
regard to markets, business models, technol-
ogies and organizational forms have further
accentuated their importance. In the light of
salient changes that we currently observe in
markets and organizations, innovation stands
out as an imperative for sustained competi-
Volume 24 Number 1 2015
10.1111/caim.12111
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
tiveness. At the market level, business models
in many high-tech and science-based indus-
tries have changed. Large, highly diversified
corporations have in certain industries been
replaced by focused small- and medium-sized
companies, which collaborate to combine their
capabilities for the development of new prod-
ucts and services. In this context, firm bounda-
ries become blurred and the capacity to
develop innovation increasingly relies on the
formation of network ties that allow for novel
combinations of knowledge. As a conse-
quence, traditional processes of learning have
to some extent been replaced by new, highly
relational mechanisms that build upon the
capacity to orchestrate and combine knowl-
edge, capabilities and expertise developed in
diverse places and with different time-frames.
Within technology-intensive firms, innova-
tion has typically been fostered through the
creation of R&D departments with dedicated
resources, in which groups and teams are
assigned to the development of new products
and processes. However, R&D activities are
also important because they potentially
increase organizations’ absorptive capacity, i.e.
the capacity of firms to assimilate and apply
external knowledge (Cohen & Levinthal,
1990). Hence, internal R&D activities are not
only important in terms of their direct knowl-
edge input into innovation processes, but also
provide opportunities to nurture internal
learning and increase the ability to intercept
and absorb new external knowledge. The latter
is of particular importance when organizations
find themselves in situations where the speed,
frequency and magnitude of innovation are
related to dispersed sources of creativity, con-
nected to each other through social networks.
The adoption of new organizational models
within firms is another important source of
change for creativity and innovation processes
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS: AN INTRODUCTION
within firms. Individuals are today more
autonomous in the definition and implemen-
tation of job tasks. Similarly, groups are becom-
ing increasingly autonomous, diverse and
decentralized. Consequently, the importance
of initiatives and suggestions provided by
employees, suppliers and customers has dra-
matically increased, and firms have therefore
increased their empowerment and facilitated
their participation in organizational creativity
and innovation. A consequence of this is that
innovation is becoming less sequential, but
rather iterative and fuzzy.
Altogether, the outlined changes to organi-
zations’ learning and innovation activities
clearly point to the increased importance of
developing and using social networks for
innovation. Despite a lively debate and numer-
ous empirical studies addressing this topic,
there are, however, still many aspects of how
social networks influence the organizing of
innovation, creativity and ideation that need to
be understood in greater detail. The papers in
this special issue are an attempt to contribute
to this task. More specifically, they aim to shed
new light on the particular micro-mechanisms
in social networks that impact creative and
innovative behaviours, as well as their result-
ing performance. The special issue consists of
this introduction and five articles, selected
from a total of 30 submitted manuscripts.
Social Networks and Innovation
In general, a social network is defined as a set
of actors – typically individuals, groups and
organizations – interconnected through social
ties or links. We observe that actors involved in
innovation processes are changing. Tradition-
ally, firms and universities, R&D groups and
scientists have been investigated as pivotal
actors in the processes of innovation. As
described above, innovation is currently gen-
erated in a more ‘democratic’ way that hinges
on the empowerment of users, customers,
employees and other individuals having no
formal roles in regard to innovation develop-
ment (e.g., Baldwin & von Hippel, 2011).
Researchers and administrators interested in
the management of creativity and innovation
need to recognize that the contribution of
these large communities of actors can be com-
bined with other organizational R&D activ-
ities. The contribution that individuals’ ideas
and suggestions provide to organizational
innovation requires a careful consideration of
important characteristics – other than their
knowledge and expertise – such as personality
traits, empathy and emotional aspects of indi-
viduals, which likely predict their level of
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
103
engagement, participation and commitment
towards an organization and its innovation
performance. Many actors are highly inde-
pendent and do not formally belong to any
institutions, reducing the efficacy of tradi-
tional managerial interventions aimed at
changing their conduct and behaviours. Roles
like ‘contributors’ or ‘participants’ have
replaced or complemented other more typical
roles in innovation, such as ‘scientists’ and
‘inventors’. The application of formal and
informal mechanisms of coordination, includ-
ing, for instance, organizational culture and
organizational teams, is challenging in this
context.
We are also observing substantial changes
in the nature and content of ties that afford
connectivity between actors. Extant research
has documented that the structure of collabo-
rative ties predict creativity and innovation
performance in a significant manner (e.g.,
Ahuja, 2000; Cattani & Ferriani, 2008). The
presence (and absence) of social ties is also
important for understanding the mechanisms
that allow ideation and creativity to take place
within and between organizations (Burt, 2004).
Prior research has largely focused on alliances
and other formal deals entailing inter-
organizational collaboration. At the individual
level, co-citations and co-authorship data have
been used extensively to explore how individ-
uals jointly collaborate to achieve innovation.
Patents and publications in the current envi-
ronment, however, seem to capture only a
limited portion of innovation tasks and pro-
cesses. The different nature of social actors has
also changed the nature of their links. For
example, employees and customers today
have a wide range of opportunities to partici-
pate in organizational innovation through their
‘thoughts’, ‘views’, ‘suggestions’, ‘opinions’,
‘positions’ and ‘ideas’. All these forms of par-
ticipation generate a complex web of direct
and indirect links, which over time lead to the
formation of informal groups and commu-
nities. There is an increasing number of
studies exploring structural characteristics of
two-mode (n × m) networks, formed by indi-
viduals (n) that provide suggestions on ideas,
prototypes or new products (m), that contrib-
ute to successful problem solving and innova-
tion (e.g., Conaldi, Lomi & Tonellato, 2012;
Tonellato, 2014). The understanding of how
social structures surrounding certain ideas/
products emerge and evolve also calls for the
adoption of longitudinal lenses. Network ties
are intrinsically subject to change. The rate and
speed with which these ties change over time
are important issues that research needs to
address. Our ability to correctly explore and
understand the dynamics of creativity and
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104
innovation networks has largely improved in
light of recently derived stochastic actor-
oriented models for the evolution of one-mode
and two-mode networks (Snijders, van de
Bunt & Steglich, 2010).
The context in which social networks take
shape greatly influences patterns of network
formation and change, in terms of, for
example, degree of stability, speed of evolu-
tion, emerging structures and mechanisms
that lead to change. Moreover, organizations
increasingly rely upon the use of IT tools such
as innovation jams, social media and other
crowdsourcing solutions aimed at creating a
virtual space where individuals are called to
participate (Bayus, 2013; Ooms, Bell & Kok,
2015). The resulting environment presents a
number of challenges for innovation manage-
ment research. We underscore some major
implications for the creation and subsequent
evolution of social networks. First, crowd-
sourcing solutions substantially reduce recip-
rocal awareness between individual inventors
and contributors along with their need to be
co-located. Whereas individual support to
innovation is voluntary, the way actors collec-
tively collaborate and contribute to the innova-
tion process is increasingly unintentional,
uncertain and unknown. Hence, social mecha-
nisms that typically permeate collaborative
ties, such as loyalty, trust and reciprocity, play
out only marginally. In contrast, we assist at an
amplification of which cognitive resources are
allocated to diverse problems, ideas and new
products, within and across organizations.
Recent studies document that comments and
suggestions addressed to solve problems and
contribute to ideas represent a relevant signal
of the allocation of cognitive resources
(Dahlander & Piezunka, 2014). Typically these
efforts are beneficial for innovation. However,
competitive interdependences and rivalry may
arise when contributors exhibit common inter-
ests towards the same ideas and problems
(Hansen & Haas, 2001; Di Vincenzo et al.,
2014). Exploring how suggestions, ideas and
contributions of individuals and groups are
articulated, challenged, revised and some-
times ignored in organizations represents an
avenue for fruitful research.
Overview of the Articles in the
Special Issue
The articles included in this special issue
investigate several of the aspects discussed
above in novel and insightful ways. An initial
overview reveals the rich contribution they
overall provide to the current debate on the
role of social networks in ideation, creativity
Volume 24 Number 1 2015
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
and innovation processes. First, the impact of
social networks is explored at different levels
of analysis, considering individuals (custom-
ers, employees and ‘embedded users’), groups
(R&D teams) and organizations (automotive
manufacturers). The ample variety of theoreti-
cal and conceptual frameworks is a second dis-
tinct element of the selected articles. One
major strength in this regard is the various
cognitive theories and perspectives that
several articles adopt to explore the complex
relation between social networks and innova-
tion. Third, we would like to emphasize the
adoption of diverse research approaches,
which rely on both qualitative and quantitative
methodologies and techniques.
The article by Sierzchula et al. (2015)
explores how automotive manufacturers use
alliances to acquire expertise in knowledge
areas that are important in the development
and commercialization of electric vehicles. The
study focuses on the content of inter-firm col-
laborations in an era of technology ferment,
analysing to what extent the nature of alliances
(explorative vs. exploitative) is subject to
change over time, as well as the differences
that incumbent firms versus start-ups exhibit
in terms of patterns of alliance formation.
Firms are urged to respond to environmental
changes through the implementation of new
alliance strategies. Inter-organizational col-
laborations change over time as new industry
conditions and characteristics emerge in the
market. Drawing on alliance data from a
sample of 24 car manufacturers in the electric
vehicle industry, the authors observe that
during a time of industrial uncertainty firms
establish a higher proportion of explorative (as
opposed to exploitative) alliances, and that
patterns of (explorative vs. exploitative) alli-
ance formation in a distinct area of expertise
show substantial differences over time. The
study also documents that incumbent firms
are more likely than start-ups to successfully
form alliances in the electric vehicle industry.
Overall, these results inform us about poten-
tial risks of treating all alliances in the same
way. At the same time, they underline the need
to conduct more refined analyses of firms’
attempts to acquire expertise in different
domains through alliance formation.
Tang and Ye (2015) investigate how diversi-
fied knowledge is associated with self-
reported radical creativity in more than 30
R&D teams in China. The authors focus on
three distinct forms of diversified knowledge
coming from (i) team members (termed ‘insid-
ers’), (ii) people outside each team (‘outsid-
ers’), and (iii) acquired through relevant
internet sources. Interestingly, the study also
provides evidence about the harmful impact of
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS: AN INTRODUCTION
social networks, documenting that between-
ness centrality decreases the positive impact
that diversified knowledge has on teams’
radical creativity. In general, network central-
ity intends to measure the strategic position
that actors have in a given network taking into
consideration the structure of network ties
linking all network actors. Betweenness cen-
trality assesses the power of single network
actors in communication and knowledge flow
networks. The authors assert that centrality
indicates heterogeneous distribution of status
and power across members, as well as a lack of
cohesiveness in groups and teams. Interest-
ingly, the authors observe that the impact of
diversity of knowledge on team creativity is
limited when individuals acquire new knowl-
edge through the internet. Similarly, the mod-
erating role of betweenness does not seem to
play out in the case of knowledge diversity
provided by the internet. This is an interesting
finding pointing to the different meaning and
value that information and knowledge
accessed throughout the internet might have
for individuals, compared to knowledge
directly provided by peers either within or
outside organizations.
The article by Ooms, Bell and Kok (2015)
contributes to the literature on boundary-
spanning tools and innovation mechanisms by
exploring how social media affects socializa-
tion and coordination capabilities for absorp-
tive capacity. The authors contribute to our
understanding of the micro-foundations of
intra-organizational capabilities relevant for
absorptive capacity, by documenting the con-
ditions under which socialization and coordi-
nation capabilities are enabled by the use of
social media. By relying on multiple case
studies, they illustrate how the use of social
media in external knowledge exploration pro-
cesses results in a more transparent and multi-
directional interaction that, in turn, fosters the
internal capabilities needed for absorptive
capacity development. Socialization and coor-
dination are also triggered by moderational
interactions by managers and experts, espe-
cially when the moderational interactions are
based on reciprocity. However, social media
also generates ambiguities that may culminate
in a general reluctance of individuals to par-
ticipate in social media communities, as well
as in uncertainties about the application of
appropriability regimes to knowledge shared
through online tools. We believe that the analy-
sis of conditions that afford the establishment
of trust relationships in the context of social
media utilization deserves careful attention in
future research.
In their paper, Schweisfurth and Herstatt
(2015) investigate how relational and cognitive
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
105
characteristics related to product use foster
opinion leadership and domain-specific
characteristics, two personal predispositions
strongly related to the diffusion of new
product innovations. The specific individual
relational and cognitive characteristics ana-
lysed are access to user networks, use experi-
ence and lead-userness. Their study focuses on
individuals who are employees and, at the
same time, users of the firm’s products – also
known as ‘embedded users’. Interestingly,
authors include empathy as a mediator vari-
able to explore the impact of relational and
cognitive characteristics on opinion leadership
and domain-specific characteristics. Their
analysis refers to ‘embedded users’ sampled in
four German firms developing gaming hard-
ware products. Results from structural equa-
tion modelling reveal that domain-specific
innovativeness is affected by use experience
and lead-userness of employees, and that
opinion leadership is only affected by the
latter. Cognitive empathy, which is affected by
access to networks of external users, use
experience and lead-userness, is in turn posi-
tively related to both predispositions towards
the diffusion of new products. We believe that
the importance of this study yields on the joint
analysis of relational, cognitive and behav-
ioural aspects of individual characteristics that
matter for creativity and innovation.
The study by Chou, Yang and Jhan (2015)
investigates the process and outcome of
empowerment strategies consisting of involv-
ing customers in new product development
through online communities. The article
explores how customers’ emotions and their
subsequent propensity to contribute to
product development are influenced by their
perception to be able effectively to influence
decision making about final products. The
authors provide evidence on the double-edged
effect that empowering customer strategies
through online communities has on individual
‘self-efficacy’, which here captures the indi-
vidual belief about the ability to play an effec-
tive role in the selection process of innovation.
A portion of customers’ suggestions and
choices are disregarded and not selected in the
final product. This reduces their passion,
loyalty and positive emotions, and at the same
time gives rise to negative emotions. Several
experimental studies demonstrate that two
characteristics encompassing the process of
empowerment, namely the size of the online
community and the domain-specific lead user
status, moderate the positive relationship
between the empowerment strategies and
individual perceived impact. In particular,
findings indicate that the empowerment strat-
egies have a greater positive effect when the
Volume 24 Number 1 2015
106
community size is smaller and the domain-
specific lead user status is higher. Results also
demonstrate that emotions mediate the rela-
tionship between the empowerment outcome
and customers’ purchase intention, and that
‘lose’ outcomes lead to more negative and
fewer positive emotions which in turn reduces
the intention to purchase new products.
Although this is certainly not the first study of
its kind (see, e.g., Amabile et al., 2005), it rep-
resents one of the few attempts thus far to
study the role of emotions in the context of a
more generalized democratization of
organizational innovation.
Apart from the specific insights highlighted
above, a number of more general observations
can be derived from the articles in this special
issue. A first aspect that needs to be noted is
that different networks may be beneficial for
different parts of the overall innovation
process. More specifically, we see that net-
works for exploration and networks for
exploitation are substantially different, under-
lining earlier works pointing to the need for
more fine-grained analyses of relationships
and networks, taking into consideration, for
example, innovation outcomes, network struc-
tures (Hemphälä & Magnusson, 2012) and
knowledge creation processes (Bergendahl &
Magnusson, 2015).
Another interesting observation is that
information from people and information
from other sources clearly have different
effects. Whereas this is hardly surprising in
itself, it points to a need for further investiga-
tion of the effects of social media and the use
of virtual systems for idea management. Argu-
ably face-to-face interaction, social media com-
munication and sharing of information with a
lower level of richness (Daft & Lengel, 1986)
do not display the same effects on innovation
and creativity and these differences call for
care in terms of generalizations regarding
network effects.
Yet another observation is that the effects of
social networks in some cases are moderated
by a range of contingencies, such as cognitive,
relational and emotional characteristics. This
underlines that networks can be seen as a sig-
nificant potential for learning, creative insights
and innovation opportunities, but that other
factors may influence if and to what degree
this residing potential is actually realized. This
calls for further identification of relevant con-
tingencies and explicit analyses of various
interaction effects.
Finally, a few overall implications for future
studies can be drawn from this special issue.
Still, studies of social networks focus primarily
on ex-post analyses of network structures
derived from interactions of different types.
Volume 24 Number 1 2015
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
Apart from the apparent need to distinguish
between different types of interaction and
communication, we would here like to empha-
size the need for studies of the genesis and
dynamics of social networks, as well as inves-
tigations taking into consideration the specific
content and semantics of the communication
taking place in these networks. In addition to
this, a challenging investigation field is how
social networks can be purposefully devel-
oped and managed. This includes deliberate
management through, for example, priming,
the use of competition and collaboration
mechanisms (Bullinger et al., 2010; Hutter
et al., 2011; Bergendahl & Magnusson, 2014),
and new formal and informal roles in distrib-
uted innovation processes, but potentially also
the use of synchronization and rhythm in
innovation, in order to allow for fruitful
orchestration of emergent innovation activities
among employees, communities and crowds.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all participants at the
XIII Italian Workshop on Organization Studies
(WOA2012) held in Verona for their useful
input to the development of this special issue.
The development of this special issue would
not have been possible without the valuable
feedback that reviewers provided to authors.
The reviewers were: Fausto Di Vincenzo,
Marcus Holgersson, Katja Hutter, Anna
Karlsson, Isabella Leone, Kerstin Linnemann,
Rick Middel, Susanne Nilsson, Luisa
Pellegrini, Cristina Rossi Lamastra, Martin
Sköld and Carl Wadell.
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Daniele Mascia (dmascia@rm.unicatt.it) is
Assistant Professor of Organizational and
Management Theory at the Catholic Uni-
versity of Rome, Italy. He has been Visiting
Scholar at Chalmers University of Technol-
ogy (Gothenburg, Sweden), KTH Royal
Institute of Technology (Stockholm,
Sweden), and the University of Sydney
Business School (Australia). His current
research activities centre on a wide range of
topics including the study of inter-personal
and inter-organizational networks, innova-
tion management, and organizational
behaviour and design, with a particular
interest in the healthcare and bio-
pharmaceutical sectors. His work has been
published (or is forthcoming) in journals
such as Industry & Innovation, International
Journal of Project Management, Journal of
Knowledge Management, Social Science &
Medicine and Social Networks. His work has
been honoured with several awards.
Mats Magnusson (matsmag@kth.se) is
Professor of Product Innovation Engineer-
ing at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in
Stockholm and Permanent Visiting Profes-
sor at Luiss School of Business and Manage-
ment in Rome. He has previously been
director of the Institute for Management of
Innovation and Technology in Sweden, and
Visiting Professor at the University of
Bologna and at Aalborg University. In addi-
tion, he is chairman of the Continuous
Innovation Network (CINet), senior advisor
of Creativity and Innovation Management,
and is active as a board member and con-
sultant to several industrial firms, as well as
Volume 24 Number 1 2015
108 CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

a teacher in different executive training

programs. His research and teaching
activities concern continuous innovation,
management of ideas and knowledge, inno-
vation networks, and strategic manage-
ment, and he has published articles on
these topics in such journals as Research
Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Manage-
ment and Long Range Planning.
Jennie Björk (jenniebj@kth.se) is a
researcher at Integrated Product Develop-
ment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in
Stockholm, Sweden. Her main research
interests are ideation, ideation manage-
ment, knowledge sharing, knowledge crea-
tion and social networks. She has recently
published her work in journals such as
Creativity and Innovation Management,
Journal of Product Innovation Management
and Industry & Innovation.

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Volume 24 Number 1 2015
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