Assess and Benchmark your Organisation's Innovation Capability*

Whilst many businesses do not actively engage in innovation and the search for opportunities, others are absolutely caught up in the so called “innovation imperative”. Before embarking on an innovation and opportunity program it is useful to know where you stand at present, and where you may stand in the future, after developing formal innovation and opportunity programs. In order to make this assessment the following gives a useful guide as to your present ranking on the innovation and opportunity scale. Answer the following questions rating them from 1 to 4 as follows:

Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Agree
Strongly Agree

Corporate Culture

Culture ranking attempts to assess the background thinking and environment that characterises your business. Some businesses and organisations are driven by autocratic and strong leaders who drive all the business decisions and directions, while others are more democratic in their approach. In broad terms the military may be seen as autocratic with orders being followed unquestioningly, whereas a family business may be driven with equal passion and participation by all members. Understanding corporate culture is important since one of the key enablers for innovation is to “have buy in” and commitment from the very top levels of management so that the very nature of innovation is a cornerstone of the organisation.

Survey Point	Score
My company has a total understanding and a clear definition of what innovation means	1	2	3	4
The Innovation message in our company comes from the top down	1	2	3	4
My company continually communicates to all staff the importance of innovation	1	2	3	4
My management seeks to have us improve or replace all of our products, processes and services on a never ending basis	1	2	3	4

Systematic Innovation

Contrary to what people may think, a company cannot prosper on the notion that lucky encounters will drive innovation and pave the way to a prosperous future. How can any corporation report to its shareholders that, with “a bit of luck” things will be OK?

Innovation is not enhanced or inspired by people sitting on bean bags and play games whilst they think or by dressing in radical clothing to advertise their “difference”.

Creating and innovation capability in an organisation is a much more scientific and well defined discipline than perhaps even the much studied and disciplined “black science” of marketing where the reasons for people making purchase decisions are often hard to understand, even for the best of marketers.

Creating innovations and finding opportunities can be done systematically in an engineering manner.

Survey Point	Score
My company uses formal innovation and creativity tools	1	2	3	4
My company has a formal method for encouraging staff suggestions	1	2	3	4
My company has established Innovation SWAT teams	1	2	3	4
My company has various ways to quickly assess and filter suggested ideas	1	2	3	4
My company encourages and rewards staff suggestions	1	2	3	4

Source of Ideas

It is commonly claimed that more than 50% of new product ideas come from the marketplace and from customers. Company employees are another great source of innovations and opportunities. However, in many businesses, especially ones where the founder is still in control, many new ideas and initiatives will come from the top.

Survey Point	Score
We do not rely on top management for our new ideas	1	2	3	4
Many ideas come from staff members at all levels	1	2	3	4
Customers are a great source of our ideas	1	2	3	4
We are constantly looking for trends in our business	1	2	3	4