Measuring the Innovation Culture of your Organisation

Introduction and how to use the measurement tool

Why Culture counts

Innovation is a word widely used, but often in many different ways and quite often in a very narrow sense. Innovation is more than just being creative and goes beyond R&D producing patents for new products.

We have a more holistic view on innovation: World class innovators today excel at all stages of the innovation process from idea generation to selecting the right ideas and implementing them successfully. To achieve innovation excellence, organisations also require a dedicated innovation strategy, the right organisation, culture and Human Capital and they have to look beyond new product development and the R&D department. Innovation has to involve the whole organisation and its stakeholders and aim not only at products but also at services, processes, and whole business models.

While the process dimension of innovation is widely understood, creating the right culture and Human Capital is how the best innovators differentiate. Many business leaders wonder why their innovation performance doesn’t reach the levels it should and cannot see the reason. In most of these cases, cultural barriers get in the way of top performance. The most successful organisations understand how to use culture as an enabler of innovation, something very difficult to imitate.

How the Innovation Culture Stereotypes Tool can help you

Based on experience with organisations from various industries and sizes, Cranfield School of Management and iProCon HCM have developed a tool to assess five of the most important innovation culture stereotypes, which can be enablers or barriers to innovation.

The tool asks a number of questions about your organisation and gives you a big picture looking at each of the five dimensions. While such a brief questionnaire can’t replace a more detailed analysis, the results give you a very good starting point to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and potential of your organisation.

Of course, it is never a one-size-fits-all approach: while high ratings usually indicate a sound environment for innovation, the highest rating for each stereotype will not necessarily be right for every business.Cranfield School of Management and iProCon HCM have the expertise to help you interpret and exploit the results. So, please do not hesitate to contact us.

How to use the tool

1st screen:

The tool first asks you some questions about you and your organisation. The mandatory fields are all anonymous information where you don’t have to expose your or your organisation’s identity. This data is only used for statistical and for research purposes to improve our service and also help us to give you better feedback on your results should you choose to ask us. The optional fields in the lower part only need to be filled in if you want us to send you additional complimentary feedback and research results relevant to you. None of this data is given to third parties or used for marketing purposes beyond what’s indicated above.

Questionnaire screens:

Once you’ve proceeded from the first screen to the questionnaire, you cannot go back to screen one again. The questionnaire comprises five screens with six questions each. Please read the questions carefully and indicate how strongly you agree or disagree with the statements regarding your organisations. Selecting strong agreement does not necessarily indicate a positive behaviour; similarly, strong disagreement does not necessarily represent a negative behaviour. You can navigate backwards and forward between the questionnaire screens, until you press “Submit”.

Results screen:

You cannot go back to the questionnaire from the results screen. The results screen shows the scores of your organisation for each stereotype and presents them as a diagram. We recommend using the “print” button to print it or convert it into a PDF document for your records.

Final screen:

The final screen gives you your unique case number, which you can use for reference if you wish to contact us regarding your results. It also provides a link to a general description of the five innovation culture stereotypes. If you want further feedback on your results, the first discussion will always be free of charge. On top of this iProCon HCM and Cranfield School of Management offer workshops, consultation and further services to help your organisation achieving better results through innovation.