Knowledge Innovation Litmus Test

Gauging the Organization

One barometer for how innovative is your organization can be determined by answering the following questions with a yes or no.

1.	Has one person been chartered with the overall responsibility to manage the corporate-wide innovation process?
	Yes	No

2.	Are there performance measures - both tangible and intangible - to assess the quality of your innovation practices?
	Yes	No

3.	Do your training/educational programs have provisions to incubate and spin-out new products and businesses?
	Yes	No

4.	Does your local, regional or international presence operate as a distributed network of expertise which learns from as well as distributes to customers?
	Yes	No

5.	Is there a formal intelligence gathering strategy to monitor the positioning of both current and potential competitors?
	Yes	No

6.	Does the rate of production of new products and service exceed the norms of your industry and create new markets in which you can excel?
	Yes	No

7.	Has a strategic alliance manager been designated to create and manage the network of partnerships and joint ventures to leverage your firm?
	Yes	No

8.	Does your marketing image portray an organization with the capacity to create and move ideas into the marketplace to make your customers successful?
	Yes	No

9.	Have resources been allocated to articulate a compelling vision internally and share company expertise externally through publications and participation in major forums?
	Yes	No

10.	Is your computer/communications capability treated as a learning tool for internal conferencing and external business leverage on the World Wide Web?
	Yes	No

Your Innovation Score
If you answered 7 out of the 10 questions in the affirmative, the chances are that you have a good handle on the innovation process of your enterprise and know how to enable an environment for the optimal flow of ideas contributing to the vitality of the company.

However, if you found yourself responding negatively to these basic innovation questions, you might want to take a look at your own processes for taking ideas to market and leveraging your intellectual capability into the future. Even if you scored high, the questions can frame an innovation dialogue.

These questions are the starting point for the Knowledge Innovation^Ž Assessment.

You can also read more about the issues behind these questions in Debra M. Amidon's book Innovation Strategy for the Knowledge Economy: The Ken Awakening.