"If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturity is letting go again" - Mary Beth Danielson

IM2 Level 5 - Innovation Optimized

Culture:  Culture encourages collaborative innovation efforts

• Culture changes at the "Optimized" level include a dedication to organization-wide collaboration within the innovation program
  

Leadership:   Chief Innovation Officer or similar innovation-related leadership structure is appointed

• At this IM2 level, leadership of the overall program is important to maintain and manage the direction of the program and the individual program maturity attributes to ensure efficiency and effectiveness
  

People:    People are encouraged to use work time to collaborate with others on ideas

• Leaders and managers allow employees and other idea generators within the company to utilize "work time" to generate, incubate and/or prototype ideas that may or may not relate to their normal job responsibilities
  

Processes:   Innovation program/portfolio system established

• Innovation initiatives are managed under a program/portfolio system to not only ensure corporate strategy alignment, but to effectively manage resource, financial and prioritization issues through the corporate work streams
  

Tools & Techniques:   Idea generation sessions are sponsored and facilitated

• To more effectively generate ideas, sessions dedicated to idea generation are scheduled, sponsored and facilitated when and where needed
  

Training:  As the maturity level increases, the need for advanced training increases proportionally:

• Advanced creative problem solving, idea generation and innovation training provided to employees and management
•  Idea generation session facilitator training program established

Facilities:   Off-site collaboration and discovery "field trips" encouraged

• In order to generate fresh ideas, employees are encouraged to go off site for training, exploration or other discovery intensive activity
  

Idea Capture:   Centralized idea database or other storage system is established

• Technology tools are implemented to add greater efficiency to the idea capture and search systems
  

Idea Management:   Idea quality control and feedback systems established

• Ideas are filtered based on organizational strategy, and as such, are subjected to the same quality control, improvement and feedback systems as all other projects being managed within the company
  

Strategic Planning:   Strategic planning includes trend analysis, cash curve analysis and open innovation sources

• Strategic management of the overall innovation program must ensure future viability through visioning, financial performance focus and additional idea generation sources
  

Metrics:  Metrics at this level begin ensure the right mix of innovation types in the portfolio, along with speed-to-launch tracking:

•  Percentage of incremental to radical innovations within portfolio
•  Average time from idea submission to product/service launch
•  Level of innovation program integration across business divisions

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If you would like to see the entire Innovation Maturity Model (IM2), please click HERE.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!!