Innovativeness should never be regarded as a stand-alone concept, because it is essentially linked with other forces of the SAM (Social Adoption Mechanism). If innovators are the R&D center, then opinion leaders are the marketing department of the social context, adapting the R&D’s innovations to fit the social context’s needs. And both ‘departments’ are necessary for a social context to adapt innovations efficiently.

If your aim is to analyse the innovator’s behavior, or to co-create with them, try to consider the other cogs of his social context as well.  Focussing too much on an isolated group of innovators might result in a lot of great ideas that miss relevance to the social context. The interactions between innovators, opinion leaders and other members of the social context, is what really should be the object of observation or collaboration.

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In 2009 I was asked to sketch the social & digital evolutions towards 2015 at the biggest online marketing event in Belgium (digital marketing first). At that point, I had mapped all social networks in quadrants based on the 4 archetypes of relationships. I envisioned that Facebook was going to evolve to the center of all relationshiptypes (just like all mature networks do).

Until now Facebook mainly acted as a social network with symmetric relationships, ie. you could only see someone’s updates if you mutually connected -in contrary to Twitter where you can follow people who aren’t following you = asymmetric relationships. This is what I labeled NETWORKING or one-to-one. The newsfeed is about GATHERING or many-to-one.

So as from today Facebook is also playing in the PUBLISHING field or the one-to-many. It was Joshua Porter who pointed this out at the time, and he also explained why this will serve ideas getting spread ; “this will allow members of Facebook to have a much larger reach than they could before…”. When the most powerful social network worldwide makes this kind of decision it is definitely increasing the potential of we-novation.

These are just very exciting times for social evolution. Now get people to subscribe to your innovative ideas.

(See my Emakina2015 presentation and my blogpost on the difference between Twitter and Facebook)

“No one is forcing you to use it. It’s obvious for people at risk if they use their real names, they shouldn’t use G+.”

Moreover, I remember this issue has been a higly charged topic in the boardroom of Facebook when they hit off. Luckily they decided that new users should register their actual name back then. I’m quite sure the social ecosystem would have been completely different today if they hadn’t pursued.

Now, next to the fact that I’m no believer of nicknames (RIP mainstream forums, ICQ, MSN Messenger…), I’m also grateful for this decision in the light of SAM (Social Adoption Mechanism). Allow me to explain;

Innovators are driven by an intrinsic motivation to be consistent to their innovative profile. They want to maintain their status and be recognised for being first. You could even argue that they are concerned with reputation management and personal branding. Just like doctors and researchers are signing off their scientifical papers with a real name, I’m convinced innovators are embracing the real life ecosystem to plant and grow their disruptive ideas.

That’s why the use of real names in social networks is going to be a very powerful detail in making this world evolve faster. So… how many influential people on Twitter are hiding their real name? Case in point.

(written after seeing Chris Anderson‘s TED presentation How Youtube Is Driving Innovation)

They are touched in such a manner, that they want to show their appreciation, irrespective of what the rest of the audience is thinking.
They are driven by passion, not by social feedback.

The most passionate clear the path for those more susceptible for the expectations of others.

It’s how the SAM (social adoption mechanism) works.

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http://blog.ted.com/2010/04/01/how_to_start_a/

It shows how both typologies (innovator and gatekeeper) are crucial in introducing a new ‘idea’ to a group. The crazy dude (typical innovator) is just doing his thing, ignoring the group’s expectations. He is driven by nothing but his own amusement.

The second guy (typical gatekeeper), seeing the social potential, copies the crazy guy’s dance, and engages his friends to join.

The little movie perfectly explains the Social Adoption Mechanism (SAM), the diverse motivations and functions of each cog in the mechanism. So thank you Derek Sivers for looking attentively at this movie and explaining it with so much enthusiasm. Damn right I will use this in my future presentations about the topic.

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He argues that great innovative ideas are not being formed during some individual Eureka moment. Rather, these ideas are formed in social places, ‘where ideas can have sex’ . Chaotic environments like ancient coffeehouses where ideas from various backgrounds were likely to come together and have unpredictable collisions. Next he makes conclusions how to facilitate the innovation process in a company, elaborating on these insights.

The idea I share with Johnson is very strong: innovation is a social event, not an individual event.

However, I tend to disagree on the idea that social gatherings are the sole stimulating environments for innovation. As the SAM (social adoption mechanism) explains, you need isolated innovators, developing their ideas away from any social guiding, in the first place. I do agree that these ideas indeed need the collision with gatekeepers and larger social contexts to refine and adapt these raw ideas … and that process could have well happened at a coffehouse.

It is this mechanism, the interaction between innovators and gatekeepers, that leads to powerful innovations.

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Let’s use some evolutionary social psychology to explain relevance … When human social systems evolved, it was crucial to let through only those products or ideas that contributed significantly to the group.

If all new ideas could easily pass, every commonly held believe by the group would be attacked by any new idea. The social glue of the system would quickly fall apart and the group would quickly become an assembly of isolated individuals.

If on the other hand not one single idea would pass, you would get a hyper conservative social system, very stable indeed, but not flexible towards the environment. If such a system faced a changing environment, it was not able to change its course. Such a social system would soon be overruled by one more adapted to the environment.

Relevance is the perfect instrument to let a social system balance between stability and evolution. If relevant,  ideas or products are quickly adopted and diffused by the gatekeepers in a social context. They are the relevance specialists in a specific domain. Irrelevant topics are ignored by the gatekeepers and thereby stay banned for their social context.

Relevance and gatekeepers are crucial cogs in the social adoption mechanism. This ‘Social Adoption Mechanism’ was designed by evolution to allow the social system to react to its changing environment, while maintaining a high level of stability.

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For long, this tribe in Northern America has been hunting and staying close to a herd of buffalos. But due to a cold period, the herd has migrated towards the south, leaving our tribe with a food problem. Their hunting techniques and equipment have been finetuned during the last decades to attack buffalos. Spear A has been proven very useful in penetrating the buffalo’s skin. Erik, the blacksmith (avant la lettre) who invented this spear A, has spent his entire live developing and refining his innovation. His son, Björn, learned a lot from his father but developed his own technique in crafting spears. Despite his father’s instructions, he focussed on a sharper spear, less secure when thrown at the animal, but able to penetrate a thicker type of skin. Björn has practiced this new spear on different kinds of wood, improved it, and tested it over and over. Björn even argued that it would allow them to hunt down the biggest animal of them all … the mammoth. Unfortunately, noone would care to listen to his fantasies, not for the least his own father.

Johan, who is very aware of the problems his tribe is facing, is willing to take a risk. As a trusted opinion leader, he believes in Björn’s spear. He asks some of his blacksmith friends to have a look at it, to change the grip of the spear and to lighten the weight so it can be thrown from further away. When he considers spear B to be ready to give it a try, the tribe assembles some of its best hunters and equips them with Spear B. The hunting of mammoth had begun …

I may hope this story illustrates how the first brand could have been born, making use of only word-of-mouth (actually, the first form of WOM must have been sound-of-mouth or gesture-by-hand ) and the SAM (social adoption mechanism). Spear B was the perfect answer to a changing environment and consequently an emerging need within the social system … Björn had the answer, Johan linked the innovation with the emerging need. The SAM did its job … it’s some plain and simple marketing.

Lessons from social psychology show us how we can efficiently communicate with the SAM by incorporating some subtle rules.

When you want to talk to your innovators

1. identifying and localising your innovators = your innovator channel
2. don’t invade their private space … show respect and be honest about who you are
3. let your expert people bring the message … they speak the same language (get your marketing boys/girls outta there!)
4. the message is expert level … focus on technical details, authenticity, …
5. they like passion about the product and expertise … show some
6. don’t pamper or reward them … this is what they choose to talk about
7. listen to feedback on your message
8. use snowball sampling to reach more innovators of your category

Now the first cog is turning. Now you need to bring your gatekeeper cog in touch … so the whole mechanism gets activated.

Your second message must be different. When innovators want to see how relevant the message is for them, gatekeepers want to see social relevance, how can this message help them to acquire social status within one of their groups?

So use your innovator message, and work on the package of the message (yes get your marketing boys and girls back in):

1. know who and where your gatekeepers are … since their interests are broader (food in stead of soup f.e.) they should be easier to find = your gatekeeper channel
2. don’t invade, share your story / message and listen to theirs
3. scarcity is key, if the message is open and out there, social scoring potential is low for gatekeepers … and their willingness to spread will be less. This is why mass media are so inefficient in getting the message across.
4. the message must be appealing and have social scoring potential, compared to the more technical message for the innovators

Rogers starts from the individual, he identifies innovators, opinion leaders, early marjority, etc. and describes why and when each of them adopts.

SAM changes this perspective and considers the group, the tribe, the social context as the unit that innovates. All of Rogers’  types are mere cogs that allow the SAM to innovate efficiently. It might be less intuitive, because we think as individuals, but once you’ve looked at innovations from the SAM perspective, it may shed a different light on how you approach your consumers.