How to measure your innovation culture
Is innovation success predictable? After six years of scientific research and more than 300 practical projects, we can provide a straight answer: Yes. If companies seem to implement projects effortlessly in their innovation management, there is a simple reason for this: they have created the right framework conditions early on and established a goal-oriented innovation culture.
In this article, you will learn how to create the right environment for innovation success in your department and your company. You will receive information that will enable you to measure your innovation culture.
Innovation culture is measurable
How well is your company focused on innovation and digital change? Which hidden innovation barriers paralyze your innovation power? Do the structures of your idea management and innovation management promote the implementation of your innovation strategy in the best possible way?
Using the scientifically based Innolytics® model (here you will find the scientific basis) you will be guided through a questionnaire.
Estimate your pressure to innovate, answer questions about your strategy, your structures, your risk culture and your working environment. Find out whether you, your department or your company are optimally aligned with the requirements of innovation and digital change.
By measuring your innovation culture you will identify hidden innovation barriers
Insufficiently communicated innovation strategies, an incentive system that neglects innovation and digital change, rigid structures and slow decision-making processes. In our scientific research, we have identified more than 30 internal barriers that stand in the way of innovation management and digital transformation in the company. Measuring your innovation culture will enable you to identify these hidden barriers that paralyze your innovation efforts.
Three examples for barriers to your innovation culture:
Long decision paths slow down the speed with which companies implement innovative projects. Companies with high innovative power radically shorten decision paths. By measuring your innovation culture, you will learn how fast decisions are made in your organization.
Insufficiently communicated innovation strategies. Do employees know which fields of innovation will be important for the company in the future? Is the future strategy sufficiently communicated? If you don’t, there are consequences: Ideas are not developed or developed in the wrong direction, projects run in the wrong direction, resources are wasted.
A misaligned incentive system. Employees should be committed to innovation, but are measured exclusively by operational results. This discrepancy ensures that projects are not driven forward with the necessary sustainability because the operational business is always in the foreground.
Innolytics® will provide you with advice on how an assessment of your corporate innovation culture is conducted. The combination of measuring your innovation culture and managing innovation with an Innovation Management Software is an excellent strategy to develop the future of teams, departments, divisions and companies.
The ten domains of an innovation culture measurement
The Innolytics® measurement of innovation culture examines ten fields that influence your innovation culture and capacity. In our study “The innovative capacity of companies” you will get to know the scientific background. You can download it here free of charge.
These ten areas are surveyed in the measurement of your innovation culture:
- Innovation strategy: Have you clearly defined and communicated the vision and mission for your company?
- Values: Does your value system promote creativity and entrepreneurship?
- Structures: Have you established the necessary processes and structures to manage different degrees of innovation?
- Leadership styles: Do managers promote new ideas and innovations in your company?
- Team composition: Have you established innovation teams with a sufficient degree of diversity ( both personal and professional)?
- Resources: Do your employees have sufficient time and material resources?
- Communication: Is innovation at the forefront of your internal communication?
- Risk culture: Is there a clearly defined framework for entrepreneurial risk that innovation teams can take?
- Working environment: How dynamic and future-oriented is the working environment?
Each of the items is supported in the analysis by several questions. You receive a well-founded analysis of your innovative culture.
Conclusion: Innovation success is predictable
By measuring your innovation culture, you can predict your company’s innovation performance over the next two to four years. And you can remove innovation barriers that interfere with successful innovation.
The analysis of more than 300 international studies has revealed: Without the right culture, no new ideas emerge. Without overcoming innovation barriers, these ideas cannot be implemented. And without a constant measurement of the innovation culture, innovations will not be driven forward sustainably.
Innolytics® supports you in setting up a cutting-edge innovation management system and continuously increasing the innovative strength of your company or department. As you can see in the chart, you can determine whether you have created the right framework conditions for implementing your innovation strategy. You recognize which projects within your strategy are highly likely to be implemented and which are critical. And you recognize for which projects you have the wrong framework conditions. You will experience all this by measuring your innovation culture.
