Report: Social Insights on Top 40 Enterprise Innovators on Twitter

April 14, 2015 by Kimberlee Morrison

Social media has become an effective vehicle for establishing thought leadership. In recent years, the number of social media users who are on a site just to follow leaders has been on the rise.

However, enterprise innovation leaders are probably the most important influencers on social media. A report from Leadtail examines the social activity of the top 40 leaders in enterprise innovation on Twitter.

Leadtail teamed up with with Brightidea, an innovation management software provider, to collect and analyze the data.

The innovators came from diverse industries, such as consumer goods, financial services, business and strategy and healthcare. Most of the business leaders were chosen because of their ability to innovate in their respective industries.

According to the report:

“These innovators all actively participate in social media to discover content, conversations, and people in a way that informs and inspires their passion for innovation.”

These innovators include Carie Davis, the global director of innovation and entrepreneurship for The Coca-Cola Company; Sean Atkins, general manager & executive vice president of digital for Discovery Communications; Mona Vernon, vice president of Thomson Reuters’ data innovation lab, and David Shaw, innovation lead & creative catalyst for Intel.

Each innovator is profiled, and their top five hashtags, @mentions and top link sources are all listed. Perhaps the most important data point from the report though, is the list of what influences the innovators, in terms of sources, people, and publications.

The top 5 publications and sites cited by the innovations during the study period were: YouTube, Forbes, the Harvard Business Review, Techcrunch, and The New York Times. Interestingly, Instagram was the 6th most influential site for the innovators.

It should be no surprise that #Innovation was the top hashtag seen in the data set. #CES2015, #bigdata, #IoT and #technology respectively held the rest of the top five tags. @richardbranson was the most influential person cited or followed by the influencers.

Twitter allows most users to access all the thoughts of these industry leaders on a daily basis, and the report was created to signal which innovators were most important to their respective industries. Gaining insights from these people could deepen your thinking on innovation, create discussion in your company, and could direct your social media campaigns to greater engagement.

For more innovation leader social insights, download the full report here.

Original Article