11. Managing Emotions Matters: A Balanced Framework for Communicating Innovations in Companies

Nowadays, innovations are crucial for nations, the progress of societies and the success of companies. But only if they are noticed and appreciated by people in their daily lives, employees, customers, experts, academics, journalists and other opinion leaders, can they fully be effective. Therefore, communication management has to take into consideration, that the advantages of innovations can be re-evaluated from different points of view – employees worrying about their jobs, companies struggling for sustaining their competitiveness or customers who mistrust products with the label “innovative”. It is the balance between facts and figures on the one hand, and emotions on the other, which is often neglected in internal and external corporate communication. The article presents a balanced framework for creating a communication strategy for innovations and discusses results of surveys from communication directors in the top 250 companies in Germany.