Investigating the Impact of Social Networks on Social Innovation

Due to the expansion and influence of social networks among users, creating private and personal communication, freedom from control, ease of access, easy sharing, access to knowledge, experience and instructions of others, they have turned into outstanding areas of communication and have paved the way for great effects. This research is intended to investigate the impact of social networks on social innovation. Hence, the main question relates to how social networks affect social innovation. The statistical population of this research consists of 140 students of associate, bachelor, master and Ph.D. degrees who were selected randomly in five certain universities in Tehran and were given questioners to participate in the study. This applied descriptive research follows correlation method based on structural equation modeling. In this research, two social network and social innovation questionnaires with five options were employed to collect data. The face validity and content validity, and the reliability of the questionnaires were confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha and factor analysis. The results indicated that at 95% confidence level, the "virtual social networks" was effective on "theorizing for problem solving" with a significant path coefficient of 5.34, on "product effectiveness and final achievement" with an amount of 4.71, on "problem finding" as much as 4.66, and on "implementation and institutionalization of ideas" as much as 3.96.