According to survey after survey becoming a more innovative business is one of the top priorities of leaders.
But where to start?
We have found that a powerful and insightful place to commence is by conducting an Innovation Benchmark.
In this way you can better focus on areas that need improvement and leverage the innovation strengths of the business.
It also means that it provides a stake in the ground to measure any future innovation activities.
In this way you can decide what is working and what is not.
IB3 Innovation Benchmark
We have developed with Tribe Research a simple and quick online survey that is completed by employees.
We have found that this inside-out approach is the best way of determining where your brand or business sits in the market-place.
The IB3 considers 3 key factors:
– Idea Development
– Market-Place Orientation (i.e. are you focussed on the customer)
– Innovative Culture
The IB3 Innovation Benchmark enables leaders to compare their results with other similar organisations.
And compare and contrast results between different divisions and levels in the organisation.
Leaders can then prepare an innovation action plan based on these results.
For example, in our latest benchmark with a consumer goods company the item that scored the lowest was:
There is an explicit and well-understood innovation strategy.
The leadership team realised when they saw these results that what was clear in their mind about innovation had not been communicated to the rest of the organisation.
This led to to launch of a series of innovation days which showcased what had gone on before and the exciting, new innovation products coming up in the future.
Our belief is that every innovation journey should start with an objective examination of your starting point.
Otherwise how will you know how far you have travelled?
Innovation Benchmarking is a key leadership investment of time and money but we have seen it pay-off again and again.
Much like customer satisfaction surveys — if you don’t measure it nothing gets done (or improved).