Communitize blog

Size Matters

Dumky de Wilde — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:32:32 +0000

Remember those days when we still lived in caves? When we used to go out hunting or berry picking with our tight knit little community of cavemen. Those were the days. Did you ever wonder how many people these groups consisted of? We did. Why? Because we like to talk about communities. That’s why we looked in to the so called Dunbar Number, a number that predicts group sizes for primates named after Robin Dunbar, anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist. Dunbar was able to determine the maximum size of a group in which any individual can sustain stable relations with all other individuals in that group by looking at cognitive capacity. The bigger the brain, the bigger the group can be without becoming unstable.
Due to our ability to speak, instead of just waving our arms around like a chimpanzee, we can sustain stable relations with up to 150 people. A larger group and we will have to spend the most of our time on social interaction instead of hunting, gathering or watching Friends, thereby greatly diminishing our chances of survival. The question of course is if and how this applies to online communities. Christopher Allen, social software advisor, has written a few very interesting articles on this topic.The key point here is that we do not invest all our time in an online community, and our energy in such a community is not focused on mere survival. So is there another way of looking at the Dunbar number in relation to online communities?
Allen looks at the functioning of groups in varying sizes from 2 (business partner or spouse) to 150. He notes that 7 seems to be a number that functions very well for committees or working groups, whereas 13 seems to be the ‘Judas’ number where close groups start to disintegrate. 40-70 on the other hand seems to be ideal for small business or army units. From 100 upward we have to realise that the community and sustaining stable relations within it will take up all of our time and thus becomes exclusive. When groups become larger than the Dunbar number we have to find ways to restructure those groups, by installing a middle-management for example or using military like hierarchy.
And now back to our online communities. There are a few take-aways from these observations. First of all, it shows the importance of social grooming for communities. Creating stable and enduring relations requires social interaction and not solely subject-matter talk. That’s why, at online fora, we often see a section that allows for gossip or chit-chat. Of course we don’t always need a stable community, sometimes a one time only interaction will do, but you will need to put a disproportionate amount of energy into mobilising and activating people. Events or initiation rites work well in this sense, because they create a shared history. Something that members can refer to and that binds them.
Secondly, there’s something to learn about the size of communities. We’ve mostly been talking about active groups, but the fact of the matter is that online communities often vary widely in activity. In this sense we can fall back to variations on power laws like the Pareto Principle, that 20% of the members are responsible for 80% of the activity, or the 1% rule (or 90-9-1 rule) stating that one percent of the members will create content, nine percent reacts on that content and ninety percent just reads. These numbers can vary depending on the sort of community, but not that much. The conclusion here is that to get a community going with a small working group of about seven power users (the one percent), you will need about 700 members. In this way we can use the Dunbar number to understand that those first couple of hundred members of your online community are vital to its existence and to keep it self-sustainable. Less than that and you will need to continue putting your energy and resources into mobilising and activating new members.
Of course there are lots of exceptions to these rules depending mostly on the intensity with which one participates in the community related subject. You can imagine work related communities or employee-engagement communities having higher participation rates, but even there participation varies widely depending on subject, time and commitment. The Dunbar number then gives us a means to look at the amount of energy we need to put into mobilising new members, activating existing members or in general the scale of a community. We’re interested in hearing your thoughts on community sizes and how you crunch those numbers!

Sorting out your brand – are you sure?

Regina Beyhl — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:21:26 +0000

Recently two potential clients gave the exact same reason (or was it an excuse?) for delaying the start of a social business project: “We need to sort out our brand first.”

So was it a simple coincidence or not? In any case it got me thinking.

What makes organizations believe that they need to “sort out their brand” before engaging in a conversation with the outside world?
Having worked for over ten years in the traditional branding industry myself, I understand, and in fact respect their hesitance and the need to address the (potential) brand issues. Back then I also used to earn a living on preaching about consistency, produced endless brand bibles and insisted that the brand police abided by every single rule in the book. Structure, coherency and apply rules & regulations to everything you do – did I mention I am German by the way?

So I used to be old school. Very branding 1.0. and now?

Around three years ago I wrote my MBA thesis on the notion of ‘co-creation’ as a challenge to traditional brand management’. It was obvious to me that the branding world had changed. Consequently, I looked for a way to practice what I preached and I found it here in Favela Fabric’s approach of two-way interaction and transparency, enabling meaningful conversations and collaboration. It was refreshing and challenging to see that there really is another approach to address some of the fundamental issues organizations today are faced with.

Here’s the bad news:
Believe me, your brand will never be “sorted out”, especially if you do not move with the times.

In the new era of empowered customers, you as a company are in the driving seat and it’s up to you to invite your external audience to help “sort the brand out together”. Your customers know more about your brand than any brand consultant ever will, so engaging in a large-scale dialogue with them seems the most logical way to build and maintain relevant and appealing brands.

So go for it: Tear down the walls of them and us, allow for ambiguity and start building your brand with the only true branding experts you need – your customers.
Consider me new school now.

Just wait for Very branding 3.0 – to be continued…

From Ipad to bowel movement 2.0

Gijs van der Pol — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:58:40 +0000

Earlier this month I presented on the interaction possibilities of the Ipad. It still ceases to amaze me how big an impact the tablet has on user experience and use. Bearing no startup time and fitted in a decent size, there is an abundance of possibilities. It’s no surprise unique stories of unforeseen Ipad uses are emerging everywhere. As it seems the Ipad is starting to replace the newspaper as the number one object to bring to the toilet. Nice to imagine what will next.

Harnessing social capital, but what is it really?

Bas Reus — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:39:06 +0000

One of our taglines at Favela Fabric is “We help organizations harness their social capital”. Many definitions exist for social capital, so what do we harness exactly? One of the characteristics of social capital is that it refers to something intangible. Another could be that it refers to human (social) relationships. To me, we’re talking about the value of networks, in an dynamic environment where these relationships can change all the time.

Frequent changing relationships in networks is a threat to harnessing the value in these networks. In that perspective, organizations can need some help. In this post I will elaborate some more about the concept of social capital, which is in fact not so obvious at all. The assumption however is quite obvious, that there is underutilized potential in these networks.

What is this potential? Do we have to see social capital as a resource? As a possible value? If so, in what appearances? If we, like myself, see social capital as the value of networks, what do these networks look like? And what social characteristics are needed to increase or maximize their value? And how can all that be influenced for the better? These are questions that pop into my head when thinking about it. Answering some would probably make the concept and the usefulness easier to understand.

In a network there is a certain structure. This structure can be seen as who is connected to who, for what purpose, what information flows between the nodes of the network, under what circumstances, how often, and so on. Without any guidance or practice, this structure just emerges by forces that are present intrinsically. Social relationships, at least in organizations, are normally shaped and strengthened by opportunism and trust. In terms of business these relationships can proof extremely valuable, but chances are that this value is far from maximized. Some nodes in the network are probably overutilized, causing inefficiencies and can lead to too much central persons. When these persons leave the network, you can understand what happens with the flow of knowledge and information.

Professional relationships between some people or groups of people have enormous potential in terms of innovative capacity, exchange of knowledge and best practices, and so on. Too really capture the value of the network, or to harness the social capital, it can help to make use of a social network analysis. That makes it easier to evaluate the value of the network, and identify (potential) problematic areas to increase the value of the network or the social capital.

Harnessing social capital in organizations is possible as well by embedding other enabling tools in the organization. Tools that help designing some aspects of the business, relational aspects, the social network in (and between) organizations. Tools that lower transaction costs and barriers to form valuable relationships, making the formation of social networks more likely. Depending of the goals and end-products of the organization (often the customer is very important here), the business needs to be designed accordingly. Bringing the right structure between strategy and operations is where the opportunities are. A social network analysis is a good starting point.

Why a bit of autism is not that bad

Raul Lansink — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:24:33 +0000

The new tantrum is adaptivity. Every company needs to be intimately connected with the in- and outside world, constantly absorbing and reacting to emerging opportunities and changes in its ecosystem. Unsurprisingly, we at Favela Fabric applaud this new principle. We think the capacity to connect and engage constituencies in a productive, mutually consensual way represents one of the great challenges of corporate management.

Many companies are already doing this. They have set up sensory systems enabling swift response. They regularly organize chat sessions or kitchen labs with their customers. They convoke town-hall meetings with their staff. As the fresh wind of outside views and events blows through the corridors, the firm hopes to get a better grip on its environment.

However, too much of a breeze can cause a severe flu, with a quivering patient showing signs of severe spasms. This jittery, hypersensitive behavior is not uncommon among many companies these days. They jump upon every incident, overreact to any disruption and rush off to yet another off site to discuss the next challenge.

I am exaggerating, but only a bit. Many companies show levels of sensitivity bordering on stress. Barely accustomed to the strain of quarterly returns, they now also have to cope with a never-ending maelstrom of incidents. Being on constant alert wears people out and disconnects them from the core purpose of the company. They hop from one urgency to another, while failing to finish their previous assignments in a satisfactory manner. Frustration, fatigue and skepticism run high. In a hypersensitive corporation, people show frenetic activity fanning in all directions. The strategic road map is littered with distracting signals, all competing for supreme attention.

In the old days, many companies were autistic. They simply followed their own path, oblivious to what was happening outside. Obviously this approach turned out to be as disastrous as chartering a route between melting ice shelves. Nevertheless, the notion of an ‘inner compass’ is extremely valid. Companies need to be able to assess the daily torrent of events in the light of their own strategy and purpose. They should not be too much troubled if things temporarily run an unexpected course. There is however a thin line between confidence and overconfidence; with hindsight, it is easy to judge the executive who stuck to his plan in the face of accumulating counter-evidence.

Balancing open engagement with the inner compass is difficult. It is about calibrating a process of signaling, filtering and acting upon key information that either corroborates or challenges the basis tenets of the strategy. The notion of inner compass also refers to a broadly shared belief in the soundness of the chosen route. This belief creates a tranquility of mind, enabling people to calmly assess the potential impact of outside events without immediately calling in the cavalry.

What we are looking at is embedding a degree of systemic instability. When a company opens up and unleashes the collective intelligence within its orbit, it also inevitably invites continuous distraction and questioning of its actions and purpose. The company cannot shut off this ‘noise’ and still expect to reap the benefits of open engagement. In effect there is no choice but to tune in, but unless you have a very clear and widely endorsed idea of where you are heading, opening up will do you as much harm as good. So yes, a bit of an autistic mindset is welcome these days..

Corporate mediocrity 2.0

Raul Lansink — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 09:30:35 +0000

Opposite to the many gurus who proclaim the Internet to be of force of Enlightenment, there are some influential voices claiming that the digital revolution is making us more stupid rather than less. The verdict is still out, but that should not stop one from reading the thought-provoking articles of Nicholas Carr.

We don’t know yet whether the Internet is making each of us smarter. What we do know is that the Internet is excellent at creating transparency. What we could hide from public scrutiny is now remorselessly exposed. Snippets of private life casually tossed on the web do not disintegrate in the digital ocean, but remain easily traceable. Whether we like or not, we live in a shop window with spotlights accentuating our less flattering sides.

Companies have called transparency either a necessity or a virtue. The constant scrutinizing by stakeholders, the calls for accountability on behalf of customers have forced companies to open up. Most often, a communications office would ‘manage’ openness by spinning the press and framing encounters with representatives of various constituencies. Transparency did not entail any spontaneity and therefore did not represent any substantial risk. Now the web has opened the door to a superior and far less accommodating kind of transparency.

Visionary executives embrace transparency 2.0 as a wedge to change an inward corporate culture oblivious to outside impulses. They enthusiastically launch forums, blogs and platforms to boost openness among employees and outside audiences. To their grief, they often encounter passive resistance from many corners. Apparently many people do no hail social technology as a boon for corporate prosperity. Why? The reasons often stated are a management system driven by hierarchy and information monopoly, a low-trust culture, deeply ingrained habits defying deviation and experimentation and simply the lack of time.

These are all true. We encounter these obstacles in every project and some prove to be very tenacious to overcome. But there is one obstacle that often remains unmentioned. Mediocrity. Let’s face it. Many companies have been able to thrive thanks to their sheer size and distribution and marketing power. In fact their performance standards barely made the mark, but they were able to stumble along because customers did not see any strong competitive difference or felt dissuaded to explore these. As long as companies kept reaping huge profits, there was little incentive to change.

As companies turn the spotlights on their own organization, the weak spots will surface. Company veterans have learnt how to distract attention and create fog around their under-performing projects. With thousands of eyeballs, escaping scrutiny becomes much harder. Transparency 2.0 turns mediocre performance from a nagging suspicion into a public fact. A legacy of mediocrity will spawn tactical behavior by those expecting to be held accountable. They participate sporadically in the social discourse, air their skepticism about open engagement (“we are not ready for this”) and drag their feet when asked to help implement suggestions for improvement (“we are already choked with stuff that needs to be done”). You might expect others to publicly reproach these renegades, but in a culture characterized by face-saving and conformity, this does not happen.

I am not passing judgment on the supposed laxity of the human character. Mediocrity may arise for numerous reasons, some of which are related to the social context, some of which have to do with personal drive and skills. Be it as it may, the result is the same: The objective of transparency as a lever for flexibility and cross-fertilization runs up against a collective fear of being exposed as the weak link in the chain.

Massive adoption of social tech can make us collectively smarter. There is no doubt about that. But before we can tap into our collective wisdom, we need to weed out the seeds of mediocrity. Technology in itself will not solve this. This is not a call for massive skimming of your workforce, but for a sensible, integral approach to bolster both open accountability and open trust. Meanwhile, expect to see many cases of mediocrity 2.0….

A threat also known as GroupThink

Bas Reus — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:05:44 +0000

Decision making comes in many forms. One can easily see the difference between a decision that you make yourself, and a decision that must be made by a group. In the latter example, many people are not quite happy with the outcome, some even not at all, and only a few are getting the outcome that they wanted in the first place. Everyone can have an opinion on the issue, which can all vary on many factors. So what’s the best outcome?

Here in the Netherlands we could vote for a new parliament, yesterday on June 9th. Our parliament is a classic example of consensus decision making, also known as the “polder model”. A key element is that the interest of the whole is more important than the individual interest. The interests are so diverse, but consensus is needed to make decisions. Otherwise the process of decision making would be unnecessary inefficient. That is exactly what is needed. People must negotiate, they must give some and take some, in order to come to a collective agreement. In the case of our new parliament, it will be a difficult task when you consider the result and the differences between the parties.

It happens all the time in the airline industry. CDM (Collective Decision Making) is even a known and accepted term there. It is based on a common situational awareness, a shared view of the constraints of the “system”. Some points that have to be agreed upon (from Center for Collaborative Planning), and are useful in many other situations:

everyone knows how – and agrees to how – decisions are made
ensure all members have an opportunity to participate in decision-making
choose the right decision making tool
understand the benefits of using consensus
use data to make informed decisions

Then there is this threat, also known as “Groupthink”. This is a phenomenon that comes to surface when many like-minded come together. Instead of finding the best possible outcome, people focus on the consensus and strive for unanimity. This often overrides their motivation to focus on realistic outcomes, they tend to ignore important signals that should be considered in the decision making process. This is a threat for creativity and critical thinking, both needed ingredients to strive for a good outcome. Groupthink will not be a threat in the coming coalition discussions to form the new parliament…

People from many disciplines are needed in order to have a fruitful creative process. Creative processes can lead to many possible implementations or solutions for a given situation. So how do we create a situation where the best possible outcome for the whole will be realized? You can ask yourself questions like: Do we need the same people that contributed to the possible outcomes when making decisions? And how many people do we need? Do we need people that haven’t contributed before, some experts from outside, or just people with the authority to make decisions, or are empowered? Important considerations.

Collective decision making is not just possible, a diverse group of people from many disciplines is even a prerequisite to fuel the decision making process. Without that fuel, this process can not be run through optimally. In other words, to make good decisions, we need a collective. Without a diverse collective there is no good decision making. Decisions need to be accepted and internalized by all the people that are affected by it. These people should be involved when making the decisions.

Twittering at work, should you?

Bas Reus — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:24:03 +0000

Before you answer this question, we should ask ourselves what status ‘Twittering’ really is. I’d like to call it a tool to update your status. Twitter or Facebook starts with updating your status. The basic idea of a status update is to share others what you are doing, what you are thinking of, or any other thing you would like to share. Some say that status updates is the same as microblogging. Whatever you would like to call it, it’s a means for one-to-many communication (or broadcasting). The question remains, why should you update your status?

One of the important rules is that it is always up to you to update your status. It’s not required to do so. There are pro’s and con’s about doing it or not doing it. It’s an activity that you’ll have to feel comfortable with. Another thing to remember is that in one-to-many communication it is likely to have more people in the audience than in broadcasting. So it is ok for people to keep track of other people there statuses, without updating theirs. Sharing and reading is voluntary, like it is with many communication methods.

The best known channel for this kind of communication is Twitter. Many people use it for their own needs, it can be for news, fun, nonsense, anything really. Good enough for personal use, when it’s not a problem that all ‘tweets’ are public, and are indexed by search engines. Not very attractive for usage within a company. As a response, there are many vendors that offer a similar service, but not for the public. For example, only people in your organziation that share the same email extension (you@company.com) are allowed. Services like Yammer, SocialCast and Present.ly are some examples. However, privacy and security concerns can still be problematic for many organizations.

I think sharing statuses can be really valuable when used in organizations, especially for organizations where employees that are geograpically distributed. It makes it possible to know who is working on what, in an easy manner. When applied rightly in intranets that people are used to, it can be a very effective addition to one’s work.

Some of the advantages of sharing status updates:

inform your audience
decide where to act upon
get informed
discover what is going on
enforces involvement and collaboration
form bonds with others from the community
foster the ability to form teams

Disadvantages:

inform more people than you would like
it can’t give a complete picture of what’s going on
people are reticent in sharing in the open
can take too much time
privacy and security concerns

The challenge is not in using such a tool, but in how to use it, or, better, in how to empower employees to use the tool best. How to overcome the disadvantages? It should fit in the daily work and routines of the people using it, it should not become an extra burden for the majority. That makes it extremely important how such a tool is introduced to the potential users. It is not about the tool, but about the people using the tool. This is something that is often and easily underestimated. Such a tool can only be introduced once. That one time is the chance to have the advantages overcome the disadvantages, and to have many people feel not too uncomfortable from the beginning.

Another challenge is that there should be some intelligence attached to the usage of the tool. Otherwise it would be a black box, very useful, but hard to understand and to act upon. For example, good intelligence makes it possible to identify social and informal relationships between employees, other than the hierarchical and formal relationships as they exist on paper. This and other metrics add to the richness of analyzing communication between employees, and can add to the understanding of other online and offline behavior, which ultimately can lead to a better business.

Social networks for organizations, or Communities of Practice

Bas Reus — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:44:09 +0000

Most people have joined one or more social networks nowadays. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter: many people have found a way to use them to their advantage. They know how to create value out of it by participating, or even just by observation. People feel comfortable by doing that. Participating and joining discussions with their peers, known or unknown, can lead to unexpected leads, build knowledge that you were or weren’t looking for, and can keep you updated in many ways.

These social networks are becoming customary tools in organizations as well. Like other niche markets, it becomes easier to extract value for people, or employees, by participating in these relatively small networks. However, to extract relevant value for employees, you can not copy the features of a social network and go from there. It strongly depends on the goals, the number of participants, the prevalent culture, the expertise of the participants, to name just a few dependencies.

Networks for employees that share the same expertise, are not social networks. We prefer to use the term ‘Communities of Practice’ (CoP), after the principles of Etienne Wenger. Wenger is known for his work on Communities of Practice. He has written some important books about the subject. He tries to understand the connection between knowledge, community, learning, and identity. You can call a CoP a practical community as well, however that would be a misuse of the term CoP. A CoP is more than a community for practitioners, it focuses more on knowledge and learning. Goals of a Community of Practice often refer to the exchange of knowledge, enabling you to doing your job better, or more efficient.

Why is that? What phenomena do you undertake that are just too time consuming? Do you recognize some of the following?

not knowing the goals of your colleagues
not taking the time to share success stories
departments that do not know what other departments are doing
the usage of wrong processes or procedures
project delays by too many talking and decision making
tasks that are being done redundantly
updates that are being e-mailed to everybody
searching information that takes too much time
searching the right people that takes too much time

One of our objectives for a Community of Practice is to make the above time consuming phenomena more efficient. The above list is just a small sample of the phenomena. Other goals can be identifying critical moments, collaboration, sharing of knowledge, and many more. It depends on the variables I noted before.

Social networks for organizations, or Communities of Practice if you like, are becoming more important. Many companies understand the opportunities for such a community. Employees are better equipped to make use of tools that are becoming quite familiar due to the reach of the current social networks. It is important to make the distinction between social networks and Communities of Practice and understand the true potential of a CoP. However knowledge about implementing a CoP within an organization is still in its early stages. That’s one of the challenges we’re facing these days.

To Intervene or not to Intervene: New insights on Online Moderation

Bob Stukart — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:31:07 +0000

Power, creativity and controversy: these are three keywords for yielding more results from innovation communities. However, it is not just simply more power, more creativity and more controversy that a community needs… Or is it?

Some time ago I was researching an employee-driven innovation community (EDI). The community was developed for the purpose of optimizing and innovating business processes, procedures and products by starting a dialogue between staff members and other employees. Main mechanism was sharing ideas and thoughts, followed by discussion to shave away the edginess to eventually result in a useful concept for that particular organization.

Background
First let me give some background on my research object. KLM is a Netherlands-based airline. Ground Source is one of its online communities, designed and developed by Favela Fabric for KLM Ground Services. This division of KLM is in charge of processing the daily intake of passengers. Ground Source was divided in two separate areas, which were the themes area and the bulletin board. The themes area was structured and divided into themes in which solutions or suggestions were sought by KLM. Reactions were possible in the form of textual comments and voting. The other section was called the bulletin board, which provided more freedom to participants on which matters to discuss. The main restriction was that posts should somehow be related to KLM Ground Services. Besides innovation related threads, this also led to threads being opened with mainly a social function or with technical questions regarding Ground Source.

The aim of my research was to study stimulating and inhibiting factors of innovation-related behavior within an EDI. Giddens’ Structuration Theory was used for the sociological perspective. However, due to the abstract nature of this theory, other theories concerning creativity and user roles were added for an operationalization of the modalities from Giddens’ theory. This sociological approach is not witnessed much in other research concerned with these kinds of communities, which is strange. If you think of a brainstorm session; does it yield innovative behavior because it is called a brainstorm session or is it something else? The outcome of such a session is a logical consequence of an accumulation of social related behavior. I believe this is also true for an online community which has the goal to yield (innovative) ideas and suggestions.

Some theory
An in-depth consideration of Giddens’ Structuration Theory goes beyond the scope of the post. Therefore I restrict myself to a brief explanation of the three modalities from the Structuration Theory, which are interpretive schemes, facilities and norms. This was also the focus of this research.

The Interpretive scheme can be seen as a framework, from which people think, reason and communicate with each other (e.g. in a particular setting users are discussing the economic situation at a very academic level, other people joining that conversation start exhibiting the same behavior) .
Some users have more facilities than others, enabling them to exercise a higher amount of power (e.g. having the ability to sanction others).
Norms are mostly determined by culture and societal layers. They shape the way we are ought to behave in a particular situation.

Results
Results of my study showed that users with more facilities are crucial in an EDI, since their interventions have a massive impact on the interaction within threads. Furthermore, it is also clear that highly creative expressions are important for setting up a creative interpretive scheme that positively affects interaction. The most important conclusions that can be drawn from my research are now summarized in a nutshell:

Highly creative expressions at the beginning of a thread set the interpretive scheme for that what follows in a particular thread.
Not only moderators and theme managers have a considerable amount of power, also people who present themselves as an authority in a particular area enjoy almost the same amount of power. They all have a large impact on the interaction within the online community.
The presence of controversy has a positive effect on the level of innovative behavior (e.g. voting negatively or creative behavior); except when that controversy is coming from someone who has more power or when no controversial reactions are given (positive votes and lots of encouragement).

Creativity, controversy and power seem to be key elements for the success of an innovation-aimed FOC, as can be deduced from above. However, it is not just simply more from these elements, to make such a community a success. It is a delicate social process.

By having said all above, I can now return to the title of this post: “To intervene, or not to intervene”. Community moderators should be very careful in when and what they say in a discussion, because it may have a massive impact on the course and content of a discussion. For example, by questioning the feasibility of a particular idea the discussion changes from innovative to defensive thinking or bleeds out completely. Moderators can also shift the whole nature of the discussion from innovation-related to something different by just asking the wrong questions. More positively, moderators’ constructive criticism seems to interact with highly creative expressions at the beginning of a thread, which enables them to steer a discussion without constraining innovation-related behavior. Noteworthy is that these results affected the moderation style of Favela Fabric.

In my concluding remark I stress that the results of my research indicate that it is worthwhile to handle a sociological perspective in this research area and thus should be explored further in future research.