When does social media promote firm innovation? The moderating role of strategic flexibility

Despite a considerable body of innovation research focusing on social media, the influence of this factor on firm innovation remains uncertain. To address this research gap, we investigate how social media applications impact the exploitative and exploratory innovation of firms as well as the moderating effect of strategic flexibility in this context. We find that social media application exhibits a positive relationship with exploitative innovation and an inverted U‐shaped relationship with exploratory innovation. We also find that resource and coordination flexibility have moderating effects on the relationships between social media application and both exploitative and explorative innovation. Our study contributes to the literature by explicating the effects of social media on firm innovation and makes important and practical contributions to our understanding of how social media can be effectively used to promote innovation.