It is Friday afternoon and all Social Media folk are buzzed about an official research institute (TNO) proving that social media enhances innovative work behaviour (IWB). The graphic in the research looks promising indeed. It is a cross-match on IWB for users of company ICT (ERP and workflow are mentioned as example) and users of social media.

Yes, non-ERP users’ IWB soars when they use Social Media. That’s not very surprising. It is probably in their genes. Whatever comes next (e.g. Social Media 2.0) will again boost innovation for this group. But wait… is that an IWB drop for ERP users that use Social Media compared to their colleagues that do not? Or am I interpreting that graph incorrectly?

Quick side step: Gartner said once that a well balanced IT budget is roughly split like this; Run the biz 70%, grow the biz 20%, transform the biz 10%. Excellent basis for an innovation strategy. But isn’t this generic distribution also applicable to a well balanced workforce? If so, that would mean that 70% of the worforce is running the business, 20% is trying to improve it (probably while running the biz as well) and 10% is trying to transform it. In a nicely balanced company. Chances are that in a average modern day corporate institute you can find about 90% running the biz.

So now back to the TNO research. That 90% of the average workforce is using corporate apps (ERP, workflow) to run their biz or any other routine system or procedure. The remaining 10% probably do not use ERP and love Social Media.
Hey! That’s you! And me too!

So here’s the question: Is the tiny drop in Innovative Work Behaviour of the 90% of the workforce corporately compensated by the massive increase of IWB for the 10% happy few? I know what any corporate CFO will think…

Have any of the tweeps actually read the research? Or is it me that is interpreting this incorrectly?