  Collective idea generation and innovation processes are complex and dynamic,
involving a large amount of qualitative narrative information that is difficult
to monitor, analyze, and visualize using traditional methods. In this study, we
developed three new visualization methods for collective idea generation and
innovation processes and applied them to data from online social network
experiments. The first visualization is the Idea Cloud, which helps monitor
collective idea posting activity and intuitively tracks idea clustering and
transition. The second visualization is the Idea Geography, which helps
understand how the idea space and its utility landscape are structured and how
collaboration was performed in that space. The third visualization is the Idea
Network, which connects idea dynamics with the social structure of the people
who generated them, displaying how social influence among neighbors may have
affected collaborative activities and where innovative ideas arose and spread
in the social network.
