Innovation Benefits When Employees Network Across Company Boundaries

Today’s best managers know that company structure can get in the way of innovation that brings together ideas across departments. Managers can help innovation happen by bringing together people from different areas. Some employees have informal social connections that cross company boundaries. These employees are helpful at bringing about innovation. However, managers must help them by encouraging formal communication across company departments. Periodically bring together key people who typically don’t work together and encourage them to discuss their problems and potential joint solutions. Help employees build strong social webs that can generate new innovative ideas.

Source: Kleinbaum, A. M., & Tushman, M. L. 2008, July-August. Managing corporate social networks. Harvard Business Review, 26-27.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

This book examines how people come together in an organized way without being in an organization. A trend of the age is for communication tools to bring people together and help determine who we are and what we do. Social tools allow many people to come together and communicate at a faster and faster rate, such as through “flash mobs” that occur, perform, and disband within minutes. Everyone can be a media outlet of information. Technology has lowered the cost of failure, so many people will try things that only a few people used to try.

Source: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. By Clay Shirky, 2008, Penguin Press, NY, ISBN: 978-1-59420-153-0.

Motivation To Gather Information Results In Finding More and Better Information

Today’s best managers know the importance of information gathering for effective managerial performance. Managers who have access to more and better sources of information are better able to make sense of their environment, are more effective at spotting trends, and are more able to achieve higher levels of performance compared to managers without such information. The larger the social network, the more time managers spend looking for more information, and the more information they find. However, having a large social network is only helpful for managers who are motivated to take advantage of the information that is available from that network.

Source: Anderson, M. H. 2008. Social networks and the cognitive motivation to realize network opportunities: A study of managers’ information gathering behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 51-78.