Measuring the Organisation's Propensity to Innovate

Recently, I was invited to one of the government ministries in Singapore to share what I could do for innovation for them. The host was interested in knowing how an organisation could be measured in terms of her innovativeness.

There are three challenges to her 'how to......?' question.

1st, we need to know what are the characteristics of innovative organisations to which her ministry could be benchmarked.

2nd, we need to know what the ministry has done in reaching and surpassing the benchmark.

3rd, we also need to know what is the impact of all these activities has on the staff in the ministry.

In fact, I have conceptualised, designed, created, developed, implemented and refined a technology in 2003 that addresses these challanges at my previous organisation. The technology is still in use after these past 4 years.

In line with this technology, I have create a newer and updated instrument called the Innovation Circumplex that:

• Uncovers what the people in the organisation have to say about the innovativeness of their organisation.
• Determines the effectiveness of the leadership's strategies for building an innovative organisation.
• Reveals how far the organisation is away from the benchmark of world class innovative organisations.

The knowledge gained from the instrument provides valuable inputs for deciding the kinds of risks to take, the levels of intervention to inject, and the types of resources to deploy in the organisation to bring her propensity to innovate higher.

Without the knowledge, management will be operating in the blind, and this endangers everyone.

Copyright 2007, Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.