How Making New Friends on LinkedIn Can Boost Creativity

#SocialMedia use is positively associated with employee productivity. People using social media at work have been found to be more engaged but also more likely to leave their company. However, we know little about how social networking technologies affect #innovation and #creativity, two of the most crucial employee traits that can make or break a company’s future.

My new paper, “Employee creativity in a digital era: the mediating role of social media”, co-authored with Jordi Paniagua (University of Valencia) and Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor (INSEAD), helps fill this gap. We found that personal creativity is positively associated with personal innovativeness on information technology, defined as a willingness to use new technologies, and this association is driven by online networking. 

Our paper is based on a study of engineers in a Fortune 500 multinational IT company. Engineers, of course, are one of the sources of creativity in any organisation. In the company we studied, employees used a few internal networking platforms, such as Microsoft Yammer and Wikis, and external ones, mainly LinkedIn and Twitter.

To be more #creative, be really linked in

“If you are on social media, and you are not learning, not laughing, not being inspired or not networking, then you are using it wrong,” says Germany Kent, a best-selling American author on social media #strategy. We can’t speak to her point about not laughing, but our study does show that for employees who want to be more creative or be perceived as creative, being a passive member of online social networks or simply using them as a source of information is not enough. You would do yourself a favour by engaging in actual networking such as connecting via social media with new colleagues, employees working for partner companies or fellow professionals in the industry.

Read more at https://knowledge.insead.edu/career/how-making-new-friends-on-linkedin-can-boost-creativity#4VvPoYpLh4RRv0us.99