 The digital footprint of innovators: Using email to detect the most creative people in your organizationPeter A. Gloor, Andrea Fronzetti Colladon and Francesca Grippa Journal of Business Research, 2020, vol. 114, issue C, 254-264 Abstract: We propose a novel method for finding the most innovative people in an organization, using email to analyze structure and dynamics of the organization’s online communication. To illustrate our approach, we analyzed the email archive of 2000 members of the R&D department of a US multinational company. We use metrics of social network analysis extended with meta-data of interaction dynamics to calculate features for individual employees: their network positions, messages sent and received, pings to others and response times. We find a distinction between innovation group leaders and subject matter experts focused on publishing papers and patents. Innovation administrators have a higher number of direct contacts, are more committed in conversations and receive more messages than they send. We also found significant differences between innovators oriented towards internal awards and innovators more concerned with external recognition of their work. Keywords: Business communication; Innovation; Research & development; Organizational behavior; Email network analysis; Social network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:114:y:2020:i:c:p:254-264 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.04.025 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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