Coolhunting and Coolfarming : harnessing the power of collaborative innovation networks using social network analysis

Abstract

Email, Instant Messaging, Voice Over IP (VOIP) and other means of online communication have become so ubiquitous today that we rarely take a moment to acknowledge how the internet has changed and redefined the ways in which we communicate and collaborate with fellow human beings. The internet has empowered us to collaborate with others in ways that were not possible till just a few years ago. As we communicate and interact with each other and form relationships, we weave intricate Social Networks that can be analyzed and exhibit communication patterns that can be quantified. In this thesis I have applied Social Network Analysis based techniques that constitute Coolhunting (Gloor & Cooper, 2007) to analyze E-Mail and WebEx communications of sales professionals of a large technology company. I have quantified communication patterns and computed metrics of social network prominence such as degree and betweenness centralities using Condor, a Social Network Analysis and Coolhunting software. Several significant correlations between the success of sales professionals and these quantified communication patterns and centrality measures were found. The communication patterns and centralities of the sales professionals exhibited several traits of Collaborative Innovation Networks or COINs (Gloor, 2006). I have assessed the implications of these communication patterns and correlations and applied the concept of Coolfarming (Gloor, 2011 a) to make recommendations to the technology company on how it could leverage the power of these COINs to their advantage. Key Terms: Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs), Coolhunting, Coolfarming, Social Network Analysis, Condor, E-Mail, WebEx