Analysing user ideas across social networks

The paper presents a new kind of idea search engine that allows analysing user ideas across multiple web-based innovation communities. Today, lots of online communities co-exist where users suggest and discuss ideas and problems. However, the diversity of such idea networks and the high launch rate of new platforms make it hard to keep track of the current idea community landscape. Our newly implemented web application is capable to integrate any online idea platform (with low configuration effort) and therefore provide a single point of access for innovation managers, problem solvers, and solution seekers. In the paper, we will show how the portal can help to support the work of these three target groups. We recapture the basic design patterns and describe the current implementation status. An emphasis is put on cross-network idea analyses illustrated using several real-data-based usage scenarios