What Inspires Innovators on Twitter

That’s exactly what a new study by Leadtail and Brightidea sought to find out. The team analyzed more than 13,000 tweets from 40 innovation leaders that were active on Twitter.

The report states, “These innovators all actively participate in social media to discover content, conversations, and people in a way that informs and inspires their passion for innovation.”

Two of the more interesting parts in the report are the most common people these innovators follow and the most popular sources they use to share links.

The top 10 accounts that innovators follow are:

1. Richard Branson (@richardbranson), founder of Virgin Group
2. Marc Andreessen (@pmarca), entrepreneur, investor and software engineer
3. Benedict Evans (@benedictevans), partner at Andreessen Horowitz
4. Glen Gilmore (@GlenGilmore), attorney and principle of Gilmore Business Network
5. Scott Kirsner (@ScottKirsner), Boston Globe columnist, author and blogger
6. Henry Blodget (@hblodget), editor, founder and CEO of Business Insider
7. Bill Gates (@BillGates), co-founder of Microsoft
8. Andrew McAfee (@amcafee), director of the Center for Digital Business at MIT’s Sloan School of Management
9. Sam Maule (@sammaule), manager at Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group and chief inspiration officer at Digital Finance Institute
10. David Birch (@dgwbirch), author and Consult Hyperion’s director

The top 10 publications from which innovators share content include YouTube, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, The New York Times, Instagram, LinkedIn, The Wall Street Journal and Twitter.

The study also found that innovation leaders follow and are influenced by hashtags. Though #Innovation was most commonly used, #CES2010 (the hashtag for 2010’s Consumer Electronics Show), #bigdata, #IoT (short for “Internet of Things”), #technology, #marketing, #startups, #leadership, #wearables and #tech made the top 10 list.

Download the full report here.