ARORA-DISSERTATION-2016

310 Pages·2016·3.03 MB·English

SOCIAL MEDIA AND INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS

A Dissertation
Presented to
The Academic Faculty

by

Sanjay K. Arora

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in the
School of Public Policy

Georgia Institute of Technology
May 2016

Copyright © 2016 by Sanjay K. Arora
SOCIAL MEDIA AND INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS

Approved by:

Dr. Philip Shapira, Advisor Dr. Julia Melkers
School of Public Policy School of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Jan Youtie Dr. Eric Gilbert
Enterprise Innovation Institute School of Interactive Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Diana Hicks
School of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology

Date Approved: January 12, 2016

~~~
To my friends, family, and spiritual community, who mean the world to me.
To a vision of a better world, which keeps me inspired, curious, and restless.
And to today, for which I am grateful and content.

~~~
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my dissertation chair, Philip Shapira, and other committee
members, Jan Youtie, Diana Hicks, Eric Gilbert, and Julia Melkers for their time and
commitment in making this research a reality. Their input and encouragement has been
priceless. I would also like to convey my gratitude to the Program in Science,
Technology, and Innovation Policy, led by Philip Shapira, Jan Youtie, Alan Porter and
Juan Rogers, who have provided the type of apprenticeship that any aspiring PhD student
could want, namely the freedom to explore new ideas and the guidance and support to
grow as a scholar. The School of Public Policy’s faculty, staff, and students; the
Enterprise Innovation Institute; the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts; and broader
Georgia Tech community have also been instrumental in preparing the foundations of this
work. I should also thank Twitter and the interviewee respondents, who have freely
provided me with two robust data sets. EY and IBM, my two links to the corporate world
throughout this five-year endeavor, encouraged my continuing education and provided
me the time and space to initiate and complete this work.
This research was supported by the US National Science Foundation through the
Center for Nanotechnology in Society (Award No. 0937591). Any opinion, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do
not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v
LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. x
LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... xii
NOMENCLATURE ........................................................................................................ xiv
SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................... xv
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION............................................................................................. 1
1.1. Definitions ................................................................................................................ 6
1.2. Innovation Models and Implications for Studying Networking and Communication
......................................................................................................................................... 8
1.3. Research Question and Method .............................................................................. 12
1.4. Contributions .......................................................................................................... 17
1.5. Dissertation organization ........................................................................................ 20
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................ 21
2.1. Open innovation and ICTs ...................................................................................... 23
2.2. Social capital and information and knowledge as resources .................................. 30
2.3. Ecosystem actors .................................................................................................... 40
2.4. Exploratory Propositions ........................................................................................ 53
Chapter 3: RESEARCH CONTEXT ................................................................................ 67
3.1. Twitter .................................................................................................................... 67
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3.2. Graphene ................................................................................................................. 70
Chapter 4: DATA AND METHOD .................................................................................. 79
4.1. Data sources and sampling strategy ........................................................................ 80
4.2. Quantitative method ............................................................................................... 81
4.2.1. Visualization..................................................................................................... 83
4.2.2. Variables........................................................................................................... 85
4.2.3. Model selection ................................................................................................ 93
4.3. Qualitative method ................................................................................................. 96
4.4. Summary ................................................................................................................. 99
Chapter 5: NETWORK ORGANIZATION AND ANALYSIS ..................................... 103
5.1. Select Firm Ego Networks .................................................................................... 103
5.1.1. @ZyvexTech .................................................................................................. 104
5.1.2. @TeamGraphene............................................................................................ 110
5.1.3. Cross Case Analysis ....................................................................................... 114
5.2. Global Patterns and Community Structure ........................................................... 116
5.2.1. Combined Friend Network ............................................................................. 116
5.2.2. Combined Follower Network ......................................................................... 130
5.2.3. Comparison .................................................................................................... 133
5.3. Summary and Synthesis........................................................................................ 135
Chapter 6: QUANTITATIVE MODELING ................................................................... 138
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6.1. Modeling Issues and an Alternative Approach..................................................... 140
6.2. ERGM Example Run ............................................................................................ 144
6.3. Testing the Relationship Between Actor Type and Network Structure ............... 152
6.4. The Mediating Role of Information Distance ....................................................... 163
6.4.1. Topic Modeling Descriptive Results .............................................................. 164
6.4.2. Testing the Relationship ................................................................................. 168
6.4.3. Post-Hoc Analysis .......................................................................................... 172
6.5. Summary ............................................................................................................... 179
Chapter 7: QUALITATIVE FINDINGS ........................................................................ 182
7.1. Sample Overview and Usage Patterns .................................................................. 183
7.2. Awareness ............................................................................................................. 190
7.3. Problem solving .................................................................................................... 193
7.4. Transitioning from Public to Private Interaction .................................................. 195
7.5. Other Innovation Outcomes .................................................................................. 198
7.5.1. Sales and Marketing ....................................................................................... 199
7.5.2. Jobs ................................................................................................................. 202
7.5.3. Impacts on the Broader Scientific Community .............................................. 203
7.6. Summary and Synthesis........................................................................................ 205
Chapter 8: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ........................................................... 211
8.1. Summary and Integration of Findings .................................................................. 215
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8.2. A Communication-Engagement Model to Predict Innovation Outcomes ............ 221
8.3. Theoretical Implications ....................................................................................... 227
8.3.1. Integrating Two Research Streams through Narrative Construction ............. 228
8.3.2. Social Capital and Information Value ............................................................ 233
8.4. Innovation Policy and Management Implications ................................................ 235
8.5. Limitations ............................................................................................................ 242
8.5.1. Alternative Explanations ................................................................................ 243
8.5.2. Methodological Reflections ........................................................................... 245
8.5.3. Usage Dynamism ........................................................................................... 249
8.6. Future Work .......................................................................................................... 250
8.6.1 Temporality ..................................................................................................... 251
8.6.2. Science Maps.................................................................................................. 254
8.7. Concluding Thoughts ........................................................................................... 257
APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................... 260
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 269

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1: Ecosystem actor types, information needs, and expected behaviors ............... 42
Table 3.1: Comparison of random tweets vs. graphene tweets by content category ........ 77
Table 3.2: Illustrative tweets by five content categories ................................................... 77
Table 4.1: Variable operationalizations for the first research question ............................ 86
Table 4.2: Terms to identify user categories on Twitter ................................................... 87
Table 4.3: Interview protocol .......................................................................................... 101
Table 5.1: Non-random selection of tweets issued by Zyvex Technologies .................. 109
Table 5.2: Non-random selection of tweets issued by Graphene Frontiers .................... 115
Table 5.3: List of graphene firms in the sample and their corresponding cluster numbers
......................................................................................................................................... 118
Table 5.4: Number of users by actor type in the combined friend network ................... 124
Table 5.5: Mixing matrix for combined friend network ................................................. 129
Table 5.6: Number of users by actor type in the combined follower and friend networks
......................................................................................................................................... 134
Table 6.1: Descriptive statistics and correlations for continuous variables .................... 144
Table 6.2: Basic ERGM model ....................................................................................... 146
Table 6.3: Adding a binary attribute for whether actors are graphene firms .................. 147
Table 6.4: Adding a term for mutuality .......................................................................... 148
Table 6.5: Actor mixing parameters with usage and network structural controls .......... 155
Table 6.6: Summary of s.s. sample coefficients ............................................................. 156
Table 6.7: Summary of s.s. sample coefficients ............................................................. 159
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