How wall posts and rewards foster collective creativity
An exploratory case study on strategic innovation of online brand fan pages
Lennart Haas S1768352
L.s.haas@student.rug.nl 22-06-2015
MSc Strategic Innovation Management University of Groningen
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ir. J.M.L van Engelen Co-assessor: Dr. I. Estrada-Vaquero
Abstract
Table of Content
1 Introduction 4 2 Literature review 7 2.1 Complex Worlds 7 2.2 Stairway to Heaven 8 2.3 Collective Creativity 102.4 Online Brand Communities 12
2.5 Interactivity 13 2.6 Extrinsic Rewards 14 2.7 Conceptual Model 16 3 Research Methodology 17 3.1 Research Design 17 3.2 Case selection 18 3.3 Research Setting 18
3.4 Data Collection and Analysis 19
3.5 Observations 20 3.6 Quality 21 3.6.1 Reliability 21 3.6.2 Validity 21 4 Results 22 4.1 Descriptive statistics 22 4.2 Interactivity 23 4.2.1 Post analysis 24
4.3 Extrinsic motivation and rewards 28
5 Discussion 34
5.1 Additional findings 35
6 Conclusion 36
6.1 Managerial Implications 36
6.2 Theoretical Implications 37
6.3 Limitations and Further research 38
7 References 39
8 Appendix
1 Introduction
In recent times, the frequency, speed and the way we communicate has fundamentally changed since the introduction of the Internet. This has created an increasingly connected society, making knowledge and information easily available from any location around the world (Salisbury et al., 2011). The increased connectivity and interactivity has developed new and higher levels of complexity in business and society, as the variables both react and influence each other. These high levels of complexity strongly limit the predictability of living systems (Prigogine, 1955), creating a feeling of loss of control (De Leeuw, 1994). Therefore, closed systems of self-interested firms have been creating value inside firms and outside markets to deal with this complexity (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). These systems became counterproductive and required firms to look into new opportunities of value creation (Nijs, 2014; Pina e Cunha et al., 2001). To effectively cope with dynamic open systems, research suggests using small steps to deal with complexity (Stacey, 1993).
In order to keep up with the complexity around them, firms will need to cooperate and combine knowledge and skills from people with diverse backgrounds (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998), as one alone is unlikely to timely come up with creative solutions independently (Bissola & Imperatori, 2011). Especially social media and online communities have generated new possibilities of bringing people with diverse backgrounds together and enabling them to pool knowledge and experience to come to new solutions or ideas that one alone would not have thought off (Hargadon & Bechky, 2006). These moments of collective creativity of the external stakeholders provide new sources to create value (Hajli & Hajli, 2013; Nijs, 2014) and are important steps of turning creative ideas into successful innovations (Amabile, 1988; Schilling, 2013). Nijs (2014) has developed the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ model that uses Imagineering, the strategic use of imagination by narratives, to unleash creative participation of individuals outside firms to deal with the increased complexity and contribute to the value creating processes. This model uses a new business logic, by blurring the firm’s boundaries and transforming the structures of value creation, aiming to design for organizational emergence (Majchrzak et al., 2006; Nijs, 2014). Where emergence is defined as “arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns, and properties in… complex
Leading scholars (Franke & Shah, 2003; Von Hippel, 2005) researched the potential of users, both firms and consumers, as creative individuals and have shown that users are more willing to share their inventions and ideas than expected. Where the pooling of knowledge and ideation in the software industry - known as open innovation - has evolved to common practice with the help of community users (Bonaccorsi & Rosi, 2006; Dahlander & Gann, 2010), the wealth of knowledge in online communities and its potential for collective creativity has yet not received the attention of many scholars (McWilliam, 2000). Current research on collective creativity has evolved from the focus on the individual’s creative capabilities (Amabile, 1996; Amabile, 1988; Shalley et al., 2004) towards the collective level of teams inside organizations (Bissola & Imperatori, 2011; Hargadon & Bechky, 2006; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003; Woodman et al., 1993). Where Amabile (1988, p. 126) defined creativity as: “the production of novel and useful
ideas”, Marion (2012) framed collective creativity as the ideas that emerge from the
interaction between diverse people to which no individual in effect is culpable for solving the problem (Nijs, 2014).
Bechky, 2006). Being able to trigger the interaction and dialogues with and between customers enable community managers to build a stronger brand community leading to higher brand equity (Muniz Jr & O'Guinn, 2001) and support the value appropriation of creative ideas and solutions for innovation managers.
Still, limited scholars have yet paid attention to the mechanisms that trigger these moments of collective creativity (Hargadon & Bechky, 2006). Hence, the purpose of this study is to discover how the message and rewards foster the collective creativity outside the firm’s boundaries and inspires consumers to actively participate in dialogues on online brand fan pages. The ‘Stairway to Heaven’ model of Nijs (2014) provides a foundation to further explore the interaction and participation of consumers in terms of co-creation and collective creativity. Therefore, the main research question will be:
How can wall posts and rewards positively foster collective creativity in online brand communities?
Sub research question:
- What type of narratives evoke collective creativity in the online brand community
towards the strategic envisioned direction?
- What type of rewards stimulate active participation in collective creativity?
outcome of the data crawl and interviews is presented in the result section, followed by a discussion and interpretation of the proposition. In the conclusion the main research question will be answered and followed by the managerial and theoretical implications. Finally the limitations of this study are presented and several suggestions for further research are proposed.
2 Literature review
Where the world around us is becoming more and more subject to higher levels of complexity, managers may perceive a loss of control of being unable to keep up with the developments around them (Nijs, 2014). The Stairway to Heaven model of Nijs (2014) uses the method of Imagineering to turn the challenges of this complexity into new opportunities by using the interaction to stimulate the collective creativity. However, where literature has recently mostly considered individual and team creativity, this thesis will look into the potential of collective creativity of consumers via social network brand fan pages. As it is suggested that collective creativity strengthens on interaction, the potential of how brand posts trigger reactions (e.g. De Vries et al., 2012) has been studied as well as how collective creativity can be reinforced by extrinsic rewards (Hargadon & Bechky, 2006). To answer the research question of this thesis, this section will discuss the four most important constructs of the study namely, the Complexity of a Networked Society, the Stairway to Heaven model, Collective Creativity, Online Brand Communities, and Interactivity. By studying the literature and combining the aforementioned concepts, 2 propositions have been deducted and will be used to explore the phenomenon of interest. This section will end with a conceptual model outlining the relations between the different constructs.
2.1 Complex Worlds
organization and that the organizations operate in equilibrium that is predictable with behaviour that is incremental and linear (West, 1985; Lichtenstein, 2000). Amongst others, the work of Brown and Eisenhardt (1997) managed to link complexity theory to the continuous change of organizations, showing that the world around us is non-linear and dynamic where independent and interacting actors are continuously on the ‘edge-of-chaos’ of order and disorder. Complexity theory states that the system cannot easily be understood by a simple deduction of its parts, as the system has blurry boundaries, is open, dissipative, and subject to emergence and self-organization that are hard to anticipate (Martin & Sunley, 2007). The application of dissipative structures from the field of physics has been extended to social and cultural human systems, according to Nijs (2014), our complex world is able to transform itself into new states of being as a self-organizing system.
The introduction of the Internet has created an aforementioned complex world in society as it changed not only the way of how both firms and consumers interact, but also the frequency and speed of communication (Nijs, 2014). This increased connectivity has also made knowledge and information more easily available at any place, anywhere, at any time (Salisbury et al., 2011). Creating the possibility for society to start acting like an open and dynamic system (Nijs, 2014) making the “old” business logic no longer seem to fit (Prigogine, 1955). The closed systems became counterproductive and required firms to look into new opportunities of value creation (Nijs, 2014; Pina e Cunha et al., 2001).
2.2 Stairway to Heaven
In order to engage with this complexity and stay competitive, firms will need to re-think their way of doing business of deal with problems in a ‘complex’ way by engaging stakeholders creatively and collectively in a strategic envisioned direction (Nijs, 2014). Based upon the Imagineering method, the “designing of a narrative to strategically ignite
and frame collective creativity” (Nijs, 2014, p. 142), Nijs developed the ‘Stairway to
of people. Words are used to create imaginative wanted worlds helping to reality we live in to advance in a connected and networked world.
Creating value, in the current dynamic business environment, can be achieved by making use of creativity (Amabile, 1988), “the generation or production of ideas that are
both novel and useful” (George, 2007, p. 441). When, according to George (2007), you
combine old and existing ideas, procedures, and processes and deriving from them new and creative solutions to problems by interacting with a diverse group of people rather than one individual, you can talk about collective creativity. As the many know more than one, collective creativity can provide substantial benefits to organizations when they are able to leverage this collective creativity to create value (Von Hippel, 2005a). By making use of collective creativity and Imagineering, Nijs (2014) converts the customers from passive to active participants in the value creation process towards organizational emergence by inspiring the individual towards the intended strategic direction. Making incremental, but well-designed intrusions, a butterfly effect is expected, creating an evolution in the established system. The model in figure 1 depicts the 8-step Stairway to Heaven model of Nijs (2014) by starting from the strategic design towards organizational emergence in the strategic direction. Following figure 1 a short introduction to all the steps will be provided.
To design for new order on the business conception a strategic direction is set forth in form of an inspiring narrative which should lead to step 2 of creating a mind-shift that leads to a generative dialogue of stakeholders on the new direction. Step 3 follows by triggering to rethink the current roles and relationships and how stakeholders can join the deployed movement. This initiates recombination and new action as stakeholders start to act differently aligned with the strategic direction. When these actions receive increased positive feedback, more stakeholders will be interested to make new steps and take action in step 5. Triggering step 6 to collective action when seeing the relevance of new actions and the positive feedback, keen to be part of the movement. By developing basic principles, value and criteria for participation the movement can be stabilized and reach the desired quality level. All these changes of collective action result in an emerging organization, that is able to function well in a more complex and open environment. Step 8 represents the field of value creation in which the organization provides to the stakeholders and society (Nijs, 2014).
2.3 Collective Creativity
interactionist model of individual creativity is driven by antecedent conditions, cognitive styles and abilities, personality, motivational factors, and knowledge. Even though, the environment influences and is influenced by the contextual factors, group creativity is not just the sum of its member’s creativity in the group (Bissola & Imperatori, 2011; Woodman et al., 1993).
Whereas these studies have largely focussed on the contextual influences shaping creative output (Sternberg, 1999), Hargadon and Bechky (2006) argue that, the aforementioned theories fall short in describing how creativity emerges via overarching complex natural interactions between individuals. They define moments of collective creativity when “social interactions between individuals trigger new interpretations and
new discoveries of distant analogies that the individuals involved, thinking alone, could not have generated” (Hargadon & Bechky, 2006, p. 489). Based on their study, it resembles
that these moments of collective creativity mainly emerge from social interaction when the problems are expressed and past experience are shared, providing a rich source to define and solve problems and come to new ideas.
Hargadon and Bechky (2006) developed a model of collective creativity by four sets of interrelated social activities that play a role in triggering the moments of collective creativity:
- Help seeking, activities that occur when an individual who either recognizes or is assigned a problematic situation actively seeks the assistance of others;
- Help giving, the willing devotion of time and attention to assisting with the work of others;
- Reflective reframing, represents the mindful behaviour on all participants in an interaction where each respectfully attends to and builds upon the comments and actions of others;
- Reinforcing, activities that reinforce the organizational values that support individuals as they engage in one of the three activities. Two types of reinforcing behaviour have been identified:
- 1 Intrinsic motivation of individuals experiencing a positive outcome in engaging in one of the three activities is likely to help again;
2.4 Online Brand Communities
As the model of Nijs (2014) designs for the active involvement of customers for the engagement in co-creation in a complex and connected society, appropriate channels for information exchange and idea generation are therefore important (Wu & Fan, 2010). Online communities provide an attractive platform for social interaction, as they are not geographically bound (Muniz Jr & O'Guinn, 2001) and facilitate fast and interactive communication (Miller et al., 2009).
Whereas in the traditional business logic value was created inside the firm and outside the market, consumers are now looking to take part in these high quality interactions of the value creation process, potentially liberating new sources of competitive advantage (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Since the rise of the Internet, new communication technologies have been introduced changing the dyadic, face-to-face, communication towards network structured social communities (Venkatesh, 1996). This ‘Online Highway’ allows members to more efficiently share and access various types of information and each others’ opinions via online, or virtual, communities, enabling members to evaluate and adjust one’s own thoughts and actions (Burke et al., 2007; Daugherty & Hoffman, 2014; Miller et al., 2009; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Online communities are websites that allow for computer-supported public consumer-to-consumer social interaction (McWilliam, 2000; Preece, 2000), they can take the shape of social network sites like Facebook, Youtube, Wikipedia (De Valck et al., 2009), bulletin boards or forums around hobbies or interest groups (Füller et al., 2007; Franke & Shah, 2003; McWilliam, 2000), but also online reviews, blogs, auction sites or gaming communities (Miller et al., 2009). For firms to interact with their customers, brand fan pages provide an interesting possibility (Muniz Jr & O'Guinn, 2001). Brand communities are characterized by Muniz and O’Guinn (2001, p. 412) as “a specialized,
non-geographically bound community based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand”, where members of the community are often highly committed to
regular basis creating a common level of understanding and thoughts on ideas (Daugherty et al., 2005).
Where collaborative practices in social interaction have been mainly face-to-face contact, the same practices are now also observed in online communities and outreach the intensity and span of offline collective creativity (Reinhardt & Hemetsberger, 2007). The easiness of entry and exit to online communities enables a wide variety of participants to contribute (De Valck et al., 2009), opening the opportunity to engage in “two-way many-to-many” interactions (Daugherty & Hoffman, 2014). Meaning, the more members or participants from diverse backgrounds with different experiences offer a greater variety of ideas, increasing the variance of potential solutions to a particular problem (Kozinets et al., 2008).
2.5 Interactivity
suggests that providing a link in the post negatively influences the interactivity to the initial post. Nijs (2014) stipulates this; she argues that the designed narrative presents the essential step in strategic design for Imagineering. In order to trigger for the imaginative tension, resulting in active participation, it is important that the narrative includes ‘the invitation to participate’ and appeals to the imagination (Nijs, 2014). Therefore the following proposal is deducted from literature:
P1. The effectiveness of the narrative in activating community members towards generating novel and useful ideas is positively influenced by the interactivity of the post and its invitation to participate in the dialogue.
2.6 Extrinsic Rewards
In order to solve the complex problems of today, firms will need to combine the knowledge and skills of people with divergent expertise (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998). Unfortunately, a clear invitation to participate appealing to the imagination of community members has also it limits in creating an imbalance for community members to participate in collective creativity. The online interaction between people has proven to be difficult as many only read messages and only a few actively engage in dialogues (McWilliam, 2000). In their research of active participation, Wiertz and the Ruyter (2007) state that active participation requires significant effort and time contribution of community members. A potential to provide material (economic) rewards might help to increase the active participation towards useful discussions (Rafaeli et al., 2007).
spur individual efforts making a fluent transition into collective creativity (Kozinets et al., 2008).
Where in firms the reward mechanisms to prize those who positively contribute to moments of collective creativity are often monetary, like promotion, or recognition; online participation is often referred to in terms of social status (Rafaeli et al., 2007). These mechanisms are presented by Hargadon & Bechky (2006) in their model as part of the process to reinforce collective creativity. However, the settings in online communities differ from the social interaction inside firms and provide a motivation to participate in online communities. Ahonen et al. (2007) have conducted a literature review on motivational factors and distinguished reputation, sense of efficacy, knowledge exchange, and social intimacy as reasons to participate in online communities. On the other hand, the social cost of help seeking also lowers the self-esteem and shows incompetence affecting the decision to the active quest for help (Lee, 2002). Contrary to the research of Ahonen et al. (2007) that evolves around online communities, the managerial implications of the research of Cvijikj & Michahelles (2013) suggest that brand page moderators should provide rewards to members to increase the number of comments on a post creating higher levels of activity to the brand page. Is there a zero sum game or can members of brand fan pages be positively influenced by the right incentives and reinforcing the process of collective creativity? The following proposition is deducted from the above:
2.7 Conceptual Model
Based upon the reviewed literature, two propositions have been deducted that influence the levels of collective creativity. The proposed factors influencing the process of collective creativity are individually placed on the left side of the model. The boxes Interactivity and Rewards represent proposition 1 and proposition 2 respectively. The measured level of collective creativity is broken down in the column on the far right. The following conceptual model is proposed in figure 2:
Figure 2 Conceptual model
3 Research Methodology
The following section of this paper will describe the operationalization of the research question and methodological choices made in the process to answer the research question. It will explain in more detail the reason why a qualitative case study design was conducted, the setting of the research, how the data was collected and the manner the netnographic analysis was performed to the collected data. Furthermore, the operationalization of the different variables in the construct will be provided. The last section controls for the reliability and validity of this research.
3.1 Research Design
As has been explained in the introduction, this paper aims to contribute to the newly developed Stairway to Heaven model (Nijs, 2014). Due to the recent publication of this model, limited scholars have yet been able to investigate it. Besides, the pioneering research of Nijs (2014) on Imagineering covers a variety of fields, like Marketing, Strategy, and Innovation. This paper’s research question enabled the author to explore how the collective creativity can be stimulated in online brand communities, with the aim to actively involve users to discussions and storytelling, as online collective creativity overreaches the magnitude of offline creativity (Reinhardt & Hemetsberger, 2007). As a result, this study will complement the model of Nijs (2014) by broadening the spectrum of cases in different fields examining how narratives can be framed to strategically ignite online collective creativity (2014) and contribute to the understanding of managers how brand equity can be enhanced and collective interaction fostered. Therefore, a combination between the inductive research approach of theory development and the a priori construction of propositions based upon extant literature was seen as most appropriate for this study in order to gather data and develop a theory based upon the data analysis (Saunders et al., 2009; Yin, 2013). According to van Aken et al. (2012) this enables the researcher to best explore the effects of a phenomenon that has not yet been fully addressed in literature and is rather scattered over different fields.
indicated by Yin (2013), when the unit of analysis is subject of contemporary events to which the researcher has little control and in order to investigate the phenomenon in-depth within its real-world context, case study research provides the most suitable design. Furthermore, as the phenomenon is closely related to complexity theory, the case study design provides a suitable way to observe how “new structures or properties
emerge when individual agents change their patterns of behaviour and interaction” (Nijs,
2014, p. 197). Where the model of Nijs (2014) provides new insights into collective action and emergence, as well the little research in the specific area, this research will take a holistic single-case research design as this specific insight provides an opportunity that few have yet considered before (Saunders et al., 2009).
3.2 Case selection
The selection of the case was based on two criteria; first, the online community needed to be accessible to the many. Higher levels of collective creativity are expected when more people with diverse backgrounds are able to contribute different experiences and have a wider variety of ideas and knowledge expanding the variety of novel and useful ideas (Kozinets etal., 2008). Second, the people that interact will need to be identified as a member of the community (Füller et al., 2008) and need to be knowledgeable on the subject matter (Wu & Fan, 2010) in order to be able to contribute to a generative dialogue and be identified as part of the community. Accordingly, online brand fan pages on a social networking site provided a positive match. It was therefore decided to use the related Facebook pages of FOF as a case study. These pages provided low entry barriers, no geographical restrictions, broad fan base, identified community members and members than use their products. When reaching out to FOF, the firm responded positive on the request to participate in this research. As many other companies, including their competitors, they are also present at online social network sites aiming on the interaction with customers. FOF was therefore very interested in the practical and managerial implications of this research on how the usefulness of the interaction could be increased.
3.3 Research Setting
3.4 Data Collection and Analysis
In order to explore the research question, this study investigated the related brand fan pages of FOF as a single-case study design. To be able to grasp a better insight into the posts and comments on brand communities, data was gathered by exploring the business phenomenon of interest by means of a netnographic methodology, familiar to Social Network Analysis. Netnography is a qualitative research method, enabling the researcher to observe and investigate online communities discretely in a faster and less expensive manner compared to classical ethnographic research (Kozinets, 2002). Furthermore, it allowed the researcher to observe the phenomenon in its natural context that was neither created nor controlled by the researcher and does not infringing members’ privacy as they voluntary contribute to the community (De Valck et al., 2009). In order to maintain this discretion, quotations will be anonymously reported. Several other studies have already adopted the netnographic approach (Brodie et al., 2013; De Valck et al., 2009; Muniz Jr & O'Guinn, 2001) reviewing the behaviour of consumers in online brand communities. Following the study of Cvijikj & Michahelles (2013), for each post the following details have been gathered and classified: the message date, post media type, number of likes, number of shares, and the number of comments. The data has been coded into initial categories and examined for related themes with the different variables to the phenomenon of interest. Adopted from the study of (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007)and adapted as suggested by Yin (2013), a comparison of extreme observations in cases might provide more easily observable contrast of the collected data.
high (reflective reframing) where each step provides an increased level of collective creativity transcending the one before.
Finally, two semi-structured interviews and one follow-up interview have been conducted lasting from thirty minutes up to one hour. The goal of the first interview was to further explore the objective of the brand fan pages and the working method adopted within the firm. Before each interview, a list with interview questions was sent and the Imagineering method and collective creativity have been explained. One interview was conducted with Mr. X, the marketing officer social media from FOF. He manages the brand pages Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. A second interview was conducted with Mr. Y, Legal Officer from FOF. In his occupation he deals, amongst others, with the infringements of intellectual property and the terms of agreement in Facebook contests. Based upon this interview, a second interview was conducted with Mr. Z, Director, to look further into the strategic and legal hazards of starting a generative dialogue in the online public domain. This enabled the researcher to triangulate the different data sources. Interviews have been conducted in Dutch and sent to the interviewee after translation to English for completeness, increasing the reliability of the interviews. For transcribed interviews, see appendix A.
Interactivity Collective creativity
Low Inform (e.g. Product launch or marketing)
Link (To news sites, blogs, YouTube, etc)
Like (Thumbs up)
Voting (Vote for alternatives) Tag (Linking another user’s name to the post)
Medium Call to act (Urge members to do
something (e.g. Liking, commenting)) Share (sharing the post on your own wall) Contest (Request to do something to
win prizes) Remark (Off-topic reaction) Comment (Help seeking, help giving)
High Question Reflective reframing (Reply to other comments)
Table 1 Operationalization of Interactivity and Collective Creativity
3.5 Observations
In line with de Vries et al., (2012), both posts and comments have been systematically reviewed on four brand fan pages on a social networking site for a period of one year, from June 2014 till May 2015. A total of 1170 posts have been fully downloaded for the purpose of this study, see table 2 and appendix B for a complete overview. All posts have been considered in the calculations, for the analysis posts have been theoretically sampled for their rich participation and comments on the specific topic by a variety of community members (Brodie et al., 2013).
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4
Likes 2015 6.240 211.511 273.223 49.016
Total Posts over period 184 489 356 142
Table 2 Over of sample data
3.6 Quality
In order to conduct research that meets the issue of inter-subjective agreement, a consensus between actors dealing with a particular research problem (Van Aken et al., 2012; Yin, 2013), the quality criteria of reliability and validity will be taken into account in the following ways:
3.6.1 Reliability
To reassure the reliability in this research, by having objective results, the following biases (researcher, instrument, respondent and situation) had to be controlled (Van Aken et al., 2012). Pre-testing the interview questions with other master thesis students has controlled for potential researcher’s bias. Furthermore, the interviews were recorded (in concurrence with the interviewee) and sent to the interviewee for coherence and accuracy. In addition, respondent bias had been controlled by the theoretical sampling of interviewees of the firms that have appropriate insights and practical experience of the used policy and strategies. Lastly, to level the different circumstances of the interviews, the researcher conducted the interviews on familiar grounds of the interviewee at various time slots.
3.6.2 Validity
the used instruments have been chosen in consultation with literature and other MSc (thesis) students and triangulation of multiple instruments and types of data. Secondly, different literature angles than proposed in the introduction and literature review have been investigated to control for internal validity. In addition, the internal validity was supported by making use of within case analysis by coding and interpreting the data (Eisenhardt, 1989). Also, the external validity had been accounted for by making use of different brand fan pages. For the purpose of this research a Mokken scale on collective creativity has been carefully developed in congruence with literature and primary research.
4 Results
In this section, the main findings of both the netnography data crawl and interviews will be presented. The three propositions have guided the analysis and will be considered accordingly. In the first section, some general statistics of the data crawl will be reported to provide a better overview of the sample. Following, the goals of the firm are outlined page. Third, results of the qualitative analysis of the sampled data are given per proposition, identifying what have triggered certain levels of collective creativity. Lastly, additional results based upon the interviews will be reported.
4.1 Descriptive statistics
Figure 3 Overview relative frequency per post type
4.2 Interactivity
Figure 4 Overview of relative frequency per Interactivity post type
4.2.1 Post analysis
Following the labelling of interactivity, as set out in the methodology, the analysis has revealed a wide diversity in interactivity of the posts over all four brand pages. Below an overview of the different interactivity categories and the corresponding levels of collective creativity are provided using examples from the selected cases. A summarized overview of posts and its level of collective creativity is provided in table 3.
Inform - In general the marketing related posts have reached only the lower levels of
collective creativity. These wall posts mainly observed to receive likes or has been shared by community members as they found it interesting or enjoyed the content. However limited, there are also a few examples that people are unintentionally triggered to actively participate to informative wall posts that was expected to receive only likes. These posts mainly covered exceptional events, extraordinary movies, or pictures and received a medium level of collective creativity. Compared to the other pages, the community members of Page 3 seem especially keen on the posts related to new products launch or illustrations of equipment of sponsored teams. These groups reached medium to high levels of collective creativity as members actively share posts and engage in help seeking.
Links - However, not directly shown in the initial analysis, linking to other web pages or
performed on the links, revealed that these links can be subdivided into three categories: Shared posts of other related brand fan pages (e.g. photo, video, or text), links to videos (mainly YouTube links) and pure links to external webpages (e.g. blogs, publishers, or reviews).
Figure 5 Overview relative frequency per Link category
Removed Table
commentary or shouts. The posts from Page 2 and Page 3 received higher levels of collective creativity compared to Page 1 and Page 4.
Overall, the post containing links to third party brand pages or the YouTube network receive low levels of collective creativity. These posts have the intention to click through to a secondary page, therefore they mainly receive likes or is being shared. Table 4 shows an overview of the posts with average replies per link category.
Link categories Count of Post Average of Likes Average of Shared Average of Comments
Link 64 99,81 7,48 1,30 Pictures + Link 144 268,90 16,07 4,27 Shared Movie 47 370,68 3,87 12,53 Shared Picture 60 204,15 0,12 1,68 Shared post 9 282,56 0,33 5,22 Youtube Link 74 96,24 18,93 1,22 Grand Total 398 212,18 11,02 3,83
Table 4 Overview of average post replies on posts categorized as Links
Voting - All four FOF brand pages have not used posts containing the potential to vote
for new products, usage or events on their walls over the past year.
Call to act - When using open or non-committal questions, community members are less
triggered to interact and contribute to the conversations and engage in collective creativity. This type of wall posts has received low levels of collective creativity by commenting off topic or tagging other non-community members. Community members are most influenced by an activated call to act in a wall post. The analysis revealed that a resolute call to act like, ‘participate now’, ‘respond below this post’, or ‘are more likely to gain higher levels of collective creativity.
Contest - The request to brand community members to take part in a contests received
medium to high levels of collective creativity. Like in the previous category, the call to act of participating to the contest is clear, having the intention to trigger members to reply. Additionally to the call to act, the post is empowered by the potential to win a prize, leading to a next level of interactivity. Posts containing links or referrals to other pages have received lower levels of attention and minimal collective creativity due to a low response rate. Following the operationalization of interactivity, contests with a link appropriate no replies, as community members are redirected. For a more in-depth analysis of the effect of rewards on collective creativity please refer to the section reporting on extrinsic motivation.
Question - The configuration of the questions influences the level of collective creativity
to the post. Closed questions, on the one hand, provide limited room to participate in reflective reframing between a group of community members. Questions with a more open setting, on the other hand, seem to trigger the imaginative thinking before responding. The recent publication of a post from Page 2 prompted the question on how a person should behave in a certain situation. The question made use of framing the replies towards an envisioned direction to the strategic moves of the person. Community members seem to be more triggered to reply to open ended questions providing they are asked to give their opinion. However, limited framing of the question may have led, with a combination of low perceived legitimacy, to a bounce in the responses. Following the second analysis, these levels of interactivity are very much alike on all four different brand fan pages. However, the number of likes and comments does seem to be influenced by the number of community members.
4.3 Extrinsic motivation and rewards
categories. In table 5 an overview of the four categories is given along with several examples from the wall posts supporting the categorization.
Price Category Example
Clothing - “We give away several items! Interested? Comment below”
- “Predict who will win event x. You have the chance to win a clothing kit!” Merchandise - “In case you missed it 2 weeks ago.. We are giving away a ‘prize’ again!”
- “Fill in your choice below! Among the correct answers, we will raffle four Iphone 4 cases with the signature of X!“
Product - “Provide your answer below before May 25th and win a ‘product’!” - “Among the correct answers we will raffle a number of nice FOF products” Tickets - “ Click on the link below, fill in the form and have a chance to win 2 VIP tickets!
- “Fancy coming along to the Experience day? We have 3 spaces to giveaway!” Table 5 Overview of categorization of prize related posts
Removed table
When trying to engage with community members or setup an interactive dialogue, the format of the post placed by the community manager plays a large factor as the community members are reactive to this composition of the text. The possibility to win entrance tickets to an event or VIP tickets to the finish location have been used most frequently as a competition over the past year but also yielded the largest difference in activity.
A comparison between the posts revealed that one post format required the members to reply by providing an answer or a reaction in the comment section below the wall post. A second format provided a short introduction to the contest along with the price and asked to click on a link to be redirected away to a secondary website. Posts containing clear requests or invitation to click on the link seem to renounce comments as the majority of the post has a response rate of two-digits, whereas four of the contest related posts have received 0 response and two post received 1 comment.
Contrary to the previous post format, other posts have required members to actively participate by replying to the comment section and have received extensive attention from the community members when the request was made to providing a creative and persuasive answer for winning a ticket. The call to act of the post has triggered community members to respond to the contest by providing a wide range of creative and compelling posts by giving personal motivation of why they should win. The level of
collective creativity can be labelled as medium to high, following the developed Mokken scale on collective creativity, where the large majority of members responded by answering the question. However, no respondent has replied to a post from another community member starting a discussion and actively engage in reflective reframing towards collective creativity retaining from evolving to have a high level of collective creativity.
Where in the second analysis a division in prizes has been made, the difference in prices does not seem to affect the response levels and the collective creativity. On the contrary, the community type and the nature of the prize does however seem to affect the responses. Proper segmentation of the community members shows to be important to prevent no-winner contests with clear prizes and call to act.
4.4 Additional results
Besides the data crawl of the Facebook walls, two interviews and one follow-up interview have been conducted. The goal of these interviews was on one hand to provide a broader basis for triangulation of results; on the other hand, it was aimed to look into the potential and dangers as perceived from the interviewee’s professional background.
Mr. X, marketing officer social media, sees the brand community provide many opportunities for FOF in case of customer loyalty and brand exposure to the community members. Though, he too experiences difficulties considering to start useful dialogues as the replies to the posts “just remains with a shout or tag. There is no real interaction or
discussion.”. He therefore welcomes the opportunity of collective creativity to increase
the interactivity of the FOF brand fan pages: “we are continuously looking on how to
improve the interaction with consumers. A theory like this could help us in this.”. Where
the interactivity of the posts plays a large part in the reactions the posts receives, Mr. X highlights that the target group is of equal importance when considering the differences in for example the Page 2 and Page 3 “Product community A is very different culture than
community B”. This distinction can also be made for the countries to which the wall post
construction of the posts is therefore considered as very important as it considers the location, timing and invitation to participate.
Contrary to the positive attitude of Mr. X, two colleagues from the legal department are more sceptical towards the use of collective creativity in the public domain from their professional point of view. Mr. Y, Legal Officer, sees the opportunities to engage with the customers on a new level, however the risk of intellectual property infringement is impending. Mr. Z, Deputy Director, stresses that “we should stay away from these
discussions on social media”. Based upon previous experiences, FOF makes use of a very
strict innovation policy that only considers the inventions that have been patented. Having a discussion on product development may also be harmful in the sense that, if FOF is working on a rather similar product “they can throw the idea in the waste bin” as it loses its novelty status needed for patent application. Mr. Y mentioned that specific questions on product improvement or solutions should “be avoided as much as possible
as these ideas might cause problems.”. Questions in relation to non-technical ideas would
5 Discussion
To the best of the researcher’s knowledge this research is one of a small group of studies to explore how collective creativity of community members can be fostered via interaction on online brand fan pages using of the Imagineering method of Nijs (2014) and the increased connectivity in society. Where many scholars have studied creativity on both individual and team level or in terms of co-creation, only a few have studied how the potential of designing to frame for collective creativity thrives on interaction. Using a netnographic methodology this study explores how interactivity of brand wall posts and rewards foster the collective creativity.
reframing, the exploration of brand pages of FOF provide sufficient positive points to suggesting that when keeping the target group in mind and make use of clear framing of the question, including a extraordinary visual, a high level of collective creativity is likely to be observed.
The second proposition of this study considered a positive increased participation of community member in generating novel and useful ideas when making use of rewards. Following the literature Hargadon and Bechky (2006) rewards reinforce the process of collective creativity as they support individuals to actively engage in help seeking, help giving, and reflective reframing. Medium levels of collective creativity have been measured in the contest related posts according to the developed Mokken scale. Community members are more keen on providing help or providing focussed answers to the question or call to act in the contest. The overall levels of collective creativity to contest related posts varied strongly; this can be traced back to the framing of the posts. Several posts make us of secondary links, redirecting the community members from the brand fan page to different website, counteract the catalytic stimulus of the reward as the participation or contribution takes place somewhere else. Posts that actively call to act and respond in the comment section have received higher levels of collective creativity and participation, as supported by the setup of Nijs (2014) the invitation to participate is clear and makes use of visuals to trigger imaginative tension. The guided and framed posts provide more creative ideas, following Wu and Fang (2010) enabling the interaction would lead to more idea generation and creativity. Based on the data from the case study, no distinctive differences have been observed between the type of rewards and increased levels of collective creativity. Therefore, the introduction of a reward does stimulate the participation and collective creativity, however it mainly depends on the framing of the post rather than the incentive itself.
5.1 Additional findings
6 Conclusion
The purpose of this research was to explore how the active participation of community members in the process of collective creativity is positively activated by the use of wall posts and rewards. The results of the data collection of four online brand fan pages has mostly revealed low levels of collective creativity. However, further analysis of the interactivity of the wall posts indicated that community members are positively fostered towards replying and commenting on topic by making use of a call to act, contests or questions. These clear invitations to participate provide important steps towards collective creativity. Wall posts with extraordinary visuals evoke imaginative tension, activating community members to respond and comment rather than mere likes. Additionally, contest related posts providing rewards also positively stimulate collective creativity. There are no direct differences between the types of rewards. Overall, the framing of the wall post fulfils an important role in fostering active participation towards collective creativity. To measure the levels of collective creativity, this study developed a Mokken scale, ranging from likes (low) to reflective reframing (high) were individuals build upon the interaction of other community members, based upon interviews and literature.
6.1 Managerial Implications
Taking a managerial perspective, this research present various important findings to online brand page community managers. The research indicates that community members’ participation to wall post discussions can be designed for by using posts with high levels of interactivity, such as a call to act, contest, or a question. Additionally the results also demonstrate that the rewards positively stimulate the Imaginative tension to participation and focussed replies of community members. This approach helps community managers to use the interactivity in its advantage by reaching out to its community members and generate interactive dialogues, rather than the counteraction of the complex environment.
into consideration, using interactivity and rewards to trigger collective creativity could be contemplated as a relatively low-cost strategy for firms to turn creativity into innovation. Using the design process of Imagineering approach provides the recombination of a firm’s resources with its environment.
Furthermore, in order to use a step-wised approach of increasing the contributions from likes and shared posts to reflective reframing, the developed Mokken scale on collective creativity presents a guide for community managers to frame and gradually increase the levels of interaction.
Finally, the digital era erupted many fundamental modifications to rules and regulation. It is likely that this also applies to intellectual property protection of online developments. In the specific case of FOF, to utilize the process of Imagineering, research on jurisprudence of precedent cases on intellectual property protection would be essential to not miss the boat and fully exploit its possibilities within the legal boundaries. A scan of brand fan pages from several direct competitors showed that none have so far adopted the Imagineering approach, creating possibilities for maintaining its level of competitive advantage.
6.2 Theoretical Implications
6.3 Limitations and Further research
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