How innovative is your company, really?

How innovative are we, really? Mark the statement closest to reality, then compare.

Leadership

Who leads innovation?

1. No one: there are no innovation roles or teams.
2. Enthusiasts and informal initiatives, with no one formally running the process.
3. An innovation leader at executive level, below the C-suite.
4. A dedicated executive who runs an organised innovation function.
5. A C-level executive, with innovation talent embedded in every team.

A promising but uncertain opportunity appears. What do leaders do?

1. Avoid the risk: this quarter's results come first.
2. Ask for more analysis, and the decision drifts.
3. Sponsor a small test when someone makes a strong case.
4. Decide quickly on evidence from experiments, and back the team.
5. Manage it as one bet in a portfolio, expecting some bets to fail.

Organisational design

Someone has a promising idea. How do they take it forward?

1. There's no route; it depends on who they know.
2. Through informal networks or the occasional event.
3. There's a known process for sharing ideas and problems.
4. One process or portal connects ideas with experts, sponsors and resources.
5. Ideas reach the right people across units without friction, helped by AI.

Can people find earlier ideas, experiments and what was learned from them?

1. No. It leaves with the people who did the work.
2. Sometimes, by asking around.
3. There are shared folders or a wiki, patchy and hard to search.
4. One searchable place holds ideas, experiments and what was learned.
5. It finds you: AI surfaces relevant earlier work as you start something new.

Innovation capabilities

What do you measure about innovation?

1. Nothing.
2. Activity: ideas submitted, events held, patents filed.
3. Some pipeline figures, reported now and then.
4. Output, impact, culture and image, reviewed regularly by the C-suite.
5. An automated measurement system that feeds the corporate scorecard.

How does AI take part in your innovation process?

1. It doesn't.
2. Individuals use AI tools on their own.
3. AI supports specific tasks, such as research or idea screening.
4. AI is built into the process: it senses the market, and proposes and scores opportunities.
5. AI agents discover and validate opportunities, with people reviewing every decision.

Real-world connection

How well do you understand your customers' needs and journeys?

1. Through anecdotes and complaints.
2. Each unit has its own view, and they rarely agree.
3. We run research and gather feedback, but it isn't joined up.
4. One view of customer journeys and pain points sets the innovation focus.
5. Customer signals flow into the innovation process continuously.

How do you test new ideas before committing to them?

1. We don't: decisions rest on opinion.
2. Rarely, and late.
3. With pilots and prototypes, case by case.
4. Concepts are tested with real users and data before any major investment.
5. Testing is fast and continuous, including experiments inside live products.

Talent and culture

Do your teams have innovation skills, such as product design, prototyping, user research and experimentation?

1. Few or none.
2. A few specialists, scattered across the organisation.
3. Some of the essential competencies are in place.
4. Strong skills in most teams, built through a structured academy or programme.
5. Specialised talent in every team, and a culture that keeps developing it.

How safe is it to share a bold or unusual idea?

1. It's risky: failure is punished.
2. Some people do, but most don't see the point.
3. People are encouraged to share ideas and problems.
4. People share and challenge ideas regardless of rank, and failure counts as learning.
5. Challenging ideas is simply how people work.

Venture building

How is innovation funded?

1. There's no budget for it.
2. From leftover budgets, case by case.
3. An annual innovation budget that is slow to reallocate.
4. Funding follows evidence, with decisions in weeks rather than budget cycles.
5. Money moves across the portfolio as fast as the evidence arrives.

An idea has been validated with real evidence. What happens next?

1. We rarely get that far.
2. It waits for a team with spare capacity, or goes to a vendor.
3. It gets built, slowly, competing with business as usual.
4. A dedicated team builds, launches and iterates it towards product-market fit.
5. Launching new products, markets or business models is routine.