Social Media Utilization for the Service Innovation: Case Study of Danish Companies

More and more enterprises are represented on online social networks. A significant number of these enterprises are uncertain to why they are present on the social technologies, while others have a clear strategy. These strategies include getting closer to the customers for new innovation and service creation. This paper looks into how innovation takes place for enterprises using Facebook as their channel for starting service innovation in the meeting between the enterprise and the customer as part of their strategy to getting closer to the customers. The paper takes a theoretical look on service innovation in the ICT service encounter, where the ICT relation is based on social media. Two Danish cases are presented (a bank and a mobile service provider) focusing on their use of Facebook in their ideation and innovation processes. Interviews and monitoring of Facebook activities are used as data sources to understand the ideation and innovation processes of the cases. The cases show significant differences in the potential for innovation, and elements such as the ideation process and the organisational readiness to engage in this type of ideation process are identified as a key for these differences. The paper concludes that service innovation via social media only takes place if there is the right mix of organisational interest and readiness as well as understanding for how the innovation process should be handled.