Bright Spots Analysis

Personalized Report for :
Your target company
Analysis

Why is this report important ?
It is difficult to objectively evaluate if a company will be a winner
or not. Interviews, financial analysis and business plans are not
enough anymore to guarantee a successful investment.
The solution is to go from subjective to objective measures.
This report measures 2 key elements in a objective way:
• Scalability of the business.
• Ability to deliver innovation consistently.
This is based on a database of several thousand
companies and 4 years of research. The results that follow
are compared against this research database.

The Hard Facts
75% of venture-backed startups fail
94% of companies are unhappy with their ability
to innovate
99% companies value innovation
5% are classified as innovative by
their peers

How to use this report ?
INVESTABILITY RANKING
• This is a 0 -10 score
BUILD ON BRIGHT SPOTS (STRENGTHS)
• Focus on the innovation capabilities and
exponential attributes where you have strengths
ONE RIGHT THING AT A TIME (STEPS)
• When companies work on too many things
progress doesn’t happen. You also need to go on
the right thing now

• This is a 0 - 10 score
BUILD ON BRIGHT SPOTS (STRENGHTS)
exponential attributes where you are
good at
• When companies work on too many
things progress doesn’t happen. You
also need to go on the right thing now
Scalability
Able to execute
innovation
Take-off
Could be’sLaggards
Wanna be’s

good at
things progress doesn’t happen. You
also need to go on the right thing now
Bright spots
bring energy,
bright spots are
motivating.
No successful
business
grows on it’s
weaknesses.
When people see
work is being done on
bright spots, they will
be more ready to fix
weak spots.
Bright Spots increase
Employee Engagement,
Employee
Engagement is Key
for Growth.
1
2
3
4
5

Partnerships
Processes
good at
things progress doesn’t happen. You also
need to go on the right thing now
Persistence
Purpose / Passion
Innovation
Over 90% companies go through these stages sequentially.
That means the right way to move forward is almost always
to simply to identify the stage a company is at now and then
work on what will get them to the next stage
Companies become innovative step by step.
Each stage is dependent on the previous stages.

ABOUT THE ASSESSMENTS
2 Scales:
10 years of research with thousands
of companies

Y-Axis
Exponential Quotient (ExQ)
measures the scalability of
your business
X-Axis
Innovation Readiness (IR)
measures the ability to execute
innovation over the time
Scalability
Able to execute
innovation

your business
measures the ability to
execute innovation over
the time
Origins
Exponential Organizations, Salim
Ismail
Sample Size:
Over 10,000 assessments run
Validation
A study from Hult University
Top quartile ExQs outperform the
average 3 to 1

Companies with the highest ExQs (i.e. those
that possess the greatest number of
attributes and characteristics found in
Exponential Organizations (ExOs) consistently
outperform industry and earnings
projections as well as their competitors.
Two years after ranking the top Fortune 100
companies by their exponential quotient,
the 10 companies with the highest ExQs (i.e.
the most flexible and adaptable of the Fortune
100) out-performed S&P projections by an
average of 3x over two years from 2015 to
2016.
An ExQ score can predict performance
Source: exoworks

Independent Variables Dependent Variable
Overall Exponential
Results
MTP 1. Massive Transformative Purpose
Internal Attributes
2. Staff on Demand (SoD)
3. Community & crowd
4. Algorithms
5. Leveraged Assets
6. Engagement
External Attributes
7. Interfaces
8. Dashboards
9. Experimentation
10. Autonomy
11. Social Technologies
Overall Exponential
Results
Internal Attributes
4. Algorithms
5. Leveraged Assets
6. Engagement
External Attributes
7. Interfaces
8. Dashboards
9. Experimentation
10. Autonomy
Overall Exponential
Results
Internal Attributes
4. Algorithms
5. Leveraged Assets
6. Engagement
External Attributes
7. Interfaces
8. Dashboards
9. Experimentation
10. Autonomy
How does ExQ measure scalability ?

General recommendations to become an
exponential company
1. MTP: inspiring a community to form around their massive vision; tracking and and retaining top talents; orienting the
organization towards external impact rather than internal politics; supporting a cooperative nonpolitical culture; providing
focus during rapid growth; and enabling agility and learning.
2. Staff on Demand: using of demand-based contractors vs. full time employees. Leverage external talent for business
functions.
3. Community and Crowd: engaging users, customers, partners and fans directly and allowing them to engage
between them, and engaging the community using digital tools.
4. Algorithms: substituting or complementing purely human decision making by machine learning.
5. Leveraged assets: flexibly access your assets rather than own them or lease them long term.
6. Engagement: converting the cloud into community members and leveraging their knowledge digitally.
7. Interfaces: interact at arm's length both inside and outside the organization, decoupling the systems that interact.
8. Dashboards: tracking critical growth drivers in real time.
9. Experimentation: learning about environment and market, maximizing the value capture and measuring and tracking
experiments.
10. Autonomy: operating in small, multidisciplinary, self-organizing teams with decision making power.
11. Social Technologies: deploying new collaboration and communication technology (live conversations across
organization) to increase the companies metabolism.

your business model
measures the ability to
execute innovation over
the time
Origins
A collaboration between Solvay
University and 3 consulting
companies (Fast Bridge, Benovate
and Innovation engineering)
Sample Size:
Over 500 assessments run
Validation
A 4 year study. The Innovation
readiness score predicts 81% of
innovation success and 38% of
business results

How does IR measure innovation ?
Independent Variables
Attitudes
1. Desire / Hunger
2. Philosophies
Entrepreneurial
orientation
3. Autonomy
4. Competitive
5. Creativity
6. Risk Taking
7. Proactivity
8. Structure
Strategy alignment 9. Strategy alignment
Processes
10. People processes
11. Organizational design
12. Customer focus
13. Co-creation
14. Ecosystem management
15. Speed / Results focus
16. System to select ideas
Learning orientation
17. Commitment to learning
18. Knowledge sharing
19. Open minded
Breakthrough
Innovation
Sustaining
Innovation
Innovation
Results
Overall
Business
Results
Dependent Variables

Does IR really measure innovation and
business results ?
Validity:
Scaled
measures / Self
declared
measures had a
.8 correlation
Reliability:
The reliability of all
scales was greater than
.80 most higher than .9
(typical
cut-off values .6-.7)
.8
38%
>.8
Of business
results
81%Of Innovation
Results

Innovation culture and capabilities grow
over time
The Basics
Strategy
Hunger
Philosophy
Learning
Orientation *
Operations
Speed
Proactivity
General systems
Customer focus
Entrepreneurial Orient.
Risk Taking
Ecosystem
Management
Structure
Creativity
Want it Do it Not scared to do more
Room to grow
Sustaining Innov.
Breakthrough Innov.
Companies are built over time ... change also happens over time.
Step 1: Identify the status of your company now
Step 2: Then focus on the single best next step
Step 3: Check for change
Step 4: If change move to the next steps

General recommendations to become an
innovative company
The Basics
Strategy alignment
Innovation training
Lean startup (learning training)
Innovation events
Training jobs to be done
Training business model innovation
Attend startup weekend
Reward Proactivity
Tell them it is important and get
them to believe …
Operations
Moments of truth (deadlines)
Learn how to ask for ideas
Systems for speed (eg. Scrum)
Acceleration programs
Training + create sessions
Strategic outsourcing for ideas
Innovation sprints
Reward Innovation
Ask for ideas, push for speed
Build ideas and systems to test
Entrepreneurial Orient.
Ask for more ideas
Hackathons (Internal + External)
Ecosystem development
Celebrate risk taking
Bring in entrepreneurs
Reward Innopreneurship
Expect entrepreneurship, bring in
entrepreneurs / partners to shake things

Investability and Classification
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Not invest Invest
Your target company
investability
Your target company classification
• Take-off: Companies that are ready to be successful and exponentially profitable over the time.

Take-off
Could be’sLaggards
Wanna be’s
Scalability Your target company
investability
Ability to execute
innovation
Challengers Exponential
Tech SavyLaggards
ExQ x IR chart

The concept of the Exponential Organization (ExO) first
arose at Singularity University (SU) in 2008 by Salim
Ismail and he was was the founding executive director of
SU.
An Exponential Organization is one whose impact or
output is disproportionately large -- at least 10 times
larger -- compared to its peers because of new
organizational techniques that leverage accelerating
technologies. In other words, it grows faster, bigger and
cheaper than its competition because it has a Massive
Transformative Purpose and scales as quickly as tech
does.
Source: Exponential Organizations, Salim Ismail
WHAT ARE EXPONENTIAL
ORGANIZATIONS ?

ExOs use fewer physical facilities and fewer employees
than traditional organizations, as they are grounded in
information technology, dematerializing physical
structures and transferring them to the digital universe on
demand. They learned to organize around an information-
based world.
To be considered an ExO, the organization must have a
Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP) and at least 4
other attributes out of 10 that reflect internal and external
mechanisms that are continually being leveraged to
achieve exponential growth, we use the acronym SCALE
(Staff on Demand, Community and Crowd, Leverage
Assets, Algorithms and Engagement) and for external
attributes we use the acronym IDEAS (Interfaces,
Dashboards, Experimentation, Autonomy and Social
Technologies).
Source: Exponential Organizations, Salim Ismail
THE ATTRIBUTES OF
EXPONENTIAL ORGANIZATIONS

The Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP) marks the
“why” behind the organization. The MTP goes beyond a
mission statement because it is on a far larger, more
aspirational scale and this means it can revolutionize an
industry and even a society.
An MTP should move a team’s focus from internal affairs
to positive external impacts, and should provide a rallying
cry that draws people in (while filtering out the
uninterested). The ideal MTP should be so sweeping,
aspirational, and definitive that competitors are unable to
craft an MTP capable of surpassing it.
Examples
Google’s MTP: “Organizing all of the world’s information”.
Tesla: “Accelerate the transition to sustainable
transportation.”
SpaceX: “Humans must become a multi-planetary
species”
DO YOU HAVE A MTP ?
CHART # 1: MASSIVE
TRANSFORMER PURPOSE
(MTP)

WHAT ARE YOUR INTERNAL
ATTRIBUTES THAT CHARACTERIZE
THE PARADIGMATIC EXO ?
CHART # 2: INTERNAL
ATTRIBUTES (SCALE)Staff on Demand (SoD): To act quickly and flexibly in a fast-changing
world, ExOs leverage external contractors. Outsourcing as many tasks as
possible rather than maintaining a large full-time workforce allows
companies to fill expertise gaps and ensure a constant flow of fresh
ideas.
Community & crowd: ExOs build and join communities, and they
crowdsource or crowdfund ideas to achieve rapid growth.
Algorithms: Companies such as Google, Airbnb and DHL are based on
algorithms, which allow for dynamic pricing, credit card fraud detection,
traffic optimization and much more. ExOs use machine-learning
technologies to refine these algorithms.
Leveraged Assets: Renting, sharing and leveraging assets such as office
facilities, machinery, copiers and even office plants has long been
standard. Now, companies are increasingly outsourcing mission-critical
assets. Apple, for example, uses its manufacturing partner Foxconn’s
factories for key product lines. Not owning assets increases agility and
allows quick scaling.
Engagement: User engagement techniques such as gamification and
incentive prizes help ExOs to engage markets quickly.

WHAT ARE YOUR EXTERNAL
ATTRIBUTES THAT CHARACTERIZE
THE PARADIGMATIC EXO ?
CHART # 3: EXTERNAL
ATTRIBUTES (IDEAS)
Interfaces: Interfaces are algorithms and automated workflows
that route the SCALE outputs as efficiently as possible to the right
people within the organization.
Dashboards: To track and monitor performance, all members of an
organization can access real-time metrics via a dashboard.
Experimentation: ExOs use methods facilitating rapid
experimentation and process improvement through fast feedback
loops.
Autonomy: ExOs have flat hierarchies to promote agility and
accelerate learning and reaction times.
Social Technologies: Social technologies drive real-time, zero-
latency conversations across the organization.

DO YOU HAVE AN EXPONENTIAL
COMPANY ?
CHART # 4: EXQ SCORE
The ExOs scale is at a minimum 10x better than their peers
in the same space. For example, a typical CPG (Consumer
Packaged Goods) company like Johnson &
Johnson or Proctor & Gamble takes about 300 days to go
from a new idea to a product on a Walmart shelf. Quirky, a
leading ExO, does that same process — new idea to product
on a Walmart shelf — in just 29 days. And that’s in an old
industry, not some newfangled internet-software-
freemium-social-gaming play.

Chart #5: 4 out of 10 = cut-off
Not all ExOs have the ten attributes,
however, there are a minimum of four
attributes to be considered as ExO and
the more attributes the more
expandable they tend to be.
Score ExQ cut-off Max Percentile ExQ strength
Overall 79.2 84 94.29
MTP 2.17 2.25 3 72.33 0
Staff on demand 1.42 2.25 3 47.33 0
Community & Crowd 2.08 2.25 3 69.33 0
Algorithms 2.67 2.5 3 89 1
Leveraged assets 3 2.5 3 100 1
Engagement 1.67 2.25 3 55.67 0
Interfaces 1.67 2.25 3 55.67 0
Dashboards 3 2.5 3 100 1
Experimentation 2.83 2.5 3 94.33 1
Autonomy 3 2.5 3 100 1
Social 2.25 2.5 3 75 0
Bussiness model 0.94 0.8 1 94 1
Exq Total 6
HOW MANY EXO
ATTRIBUTES DO YOU
HAVE ?

Innovation Readiness
Charts 6-10

The IR is based on work presented in over 200
academic articles.
Research has linked significantly higher levels
of innovation and business performance to
business philosophies, strategic alignment,
business processes and organizational
learning.
Culture and process are the drivers of
innovation success.
Strategic Alignment
Attitudes Processes
Learning
Innovation
Performance
Firm
Performance
Source: http://tiny.cc/9uutsz
DO YOU REALLY WANT
TO INNOVATE ?

Innovation can (rarely) happen by accident, but it
usually doesn't. It can be a one-time event or a
systemic process.
Companies that invest in creating Innovation
systems are usually driven by a hunger to do things
better and differently. They are often led by people
that are intellectually curious and have a desire to
change the world. Innovation can also just be in a
company's soul.
A low score here is a warning sign. Possible
solutions are to visualize the benefits of Innovation
and look for quick wins to build confidence that
your company can be innovative but also work on a
diversification of the workforce in terms of
skills/experience...
DO YOU REALLY WANT
TO INNOVATE ?CHART # 6: ATTITUDE,
LEADERSHIP & CULTURE

Entrepreneurial Orientation represents the processes, practices and
decision-making which are embodied in the entrepreneurial process, closely
linked at the level of an innovative business setup. We call it “Inno-
Preneurship”.
A high measure of Entrepreneurial Orientation reflects the ability of a
company to quickly and effectively identify opportunities to build its
business in an innovative way, and to take advantage of these business
opportunities. This is an important complement to the Innovation
Readiness because it is not sufficient to be good at innovating - a company
needs to be run in an entrepreneurial way to identify the business
opportunities that are the triggers for innovation, and in particular for
developing concretely , on an SMTM (Show Me The Money) way, new areas
of business.
This chart shows how your company compares with all of the companies
with a similar profile to yours, with regard to Entrepreneurial Orientation.
IS YOUR ORGANIZATION BE
DRIVEN BY AN
ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET ?
CHART # 7: ENTREPRENEURIAL
ORIENTATION

Innovation activities need to fit in the context of
the longer term direction of your company.
A high score on this factor indicates that you have
a very clear vision of the future of the business,
you are continually planning to develop the
business, and you are continually looking for ways
to balance activities across the different areas of
your company and, last but not least, innovation is
concretely handled on the field as a strategic long
term initiative. Board and C-Level executives
should clearly be involved herewith.
ARE YOU ALIGNED FOR
SUCCESS ?
CHART # 8: STRATEGIC
ALIGNMENT

The habits OF INNOVATION SUCCESS are anchored in the DNA of a
company. Successful innovators almost always have the right systems
and processes in place to make innovation happen.
The most important habits are :
• Organizational Design
• People Processes
• Systems to select ideas
• Customer Focus
• Co-Creation
• Eco-system management
• Speed/results focus
JUST TALKING ABOUT
INNOVATION IS NOT
ENOUGH...
CHART # 9: OPERATING
PROCEDURES
YOU NEED TO DEVELOP THE HABITS OF
INNOVATION SUCCESS

IS YOUR ORGANIZATION
GETTING SMARTER ?
CHART # 10: LEARNING
ORIENTATION
Learning orientation refers to organization-wide
activity of creating and using knowledge to enhance
competitive advantage. This includes obtaining and
sharing information about customer needs, market
changes, and competitor actions, as well as
development of new technologies to create new
highly competitive products that are by essence
superior to those of competitors.
Your learning orientation influences what kind of
information is gathered and how it is interpreted,
evaluated, and shared. The 3 key components of
learning orientation are commitment to learning,
open-mindedness and intra-organizational knowledge
sharing.

KEY RESULTS
ExQ Scores
Investability score:
7.0
Score ExQ cut-off Max Percentile ExQ strength
Overall 79.2 84 94.29
MTP 2.17 2.25 3 72.33 0
Staff on demand 1.42 2.25 3 47.33 0
Community & Crowd 2.08 2.25 3 69.33 0
Algorithms 2.67 2.5 3 89 1
Leveraged assets 3 2.5 3 100 1
Engagement 1.67 2.25 3 55.67 0
Interfaces 1.67 2.25 3 55.67 0
Dashboards 3 2.5 3 100 1
Experimentation 2.83 2.5 3 94.33 1
Autonomy 3 2.5 3 100 1
Social 2.25 2.5 3 75 0
Bussiness model 0.94 0.8 1 94 1
Exq Total 6

Notes and Recommendations
This section will be completed on a company by company basis

How do ExO attributes contribute to
exponential results ?
1. MTP
A strong MTP is an ExO’s competitive edge. It is so inspirational, it generates a cultural movement around the ExO, ultimately creating its
own community, tribe and culture.
2. Staff on Demand
During the industrial revolution, having a large workforce allowed an organization to accomplish more. In today’s information age, that
same large workforce becomes an anchor that reduces maneuverability and slows you down. In any information-enabled business a
large internal staff seems increasingly unnecessary, counterproductive and expensive. Outsourcing whenever you can make your
company agile, flexible, fast-moving, and cost-effective.
Prerequisites: Interfaces to manage SoD and clear task specification.
3. Community & Crowd
Today, the internet has made it possible for organizations to build their community and crowd beyond borders who share the same MTP.
ExOs leverage community and crowd for many functions traditionally handled inside the enterprise, including idea generation, funding,
design, distribution, marketing and sales. This agility allows for rapid implementation and exponential results.
Prerequisites: MTP, engagement, authentic and transparent leadership, low threshold to participate and P2P value creation.
4. Algorithms
Remarkably, and often tragically, most companies today are still driven almost solely on the intuitive guesses of their leaders who are
just as likely to fall prey to a long list of self-delusions and cognitive biases.
Algorithms are thus a critical future component of every business. Almost all the business insights and decisions of tomorrow will be
data-driven. Given that they are much more objective, scalable, and flexible than human beings, they are also critical for organizations
committed to driving exponential growth.
Prerequisites: Machines or deep learning techniques and cultural acceptance.

5. Leveraged Assets
Renting, sharing or leveraging assets — as opposed to owning them — enables organizations to easily share and scale assets not only
locally, but also globally, and without boundaries.
As with Staff on Demand, ExOs retain their flexibility precisely by not owning assets, even in strategic areas. This practice optimizes
flexibility and allows the enterprise to scale incredibly quickly as it obviates the need for staff to manage those assets.
Prerequisites: Abundance of easily available assets and interfaces.
6. Engagement
Connected individuals can now do what once only large centralized organizations could. Engagement creates network effects and
positive feedback loops with extraordinary reach.
The biggest impact of engagement techniques is on customers and the entire external ecosystem. However, these techniques can also
be used internally with employees to boost collaboration, innovation and loyalty.
Unless an ExO is able to optimize the engagement of its community and crowd, it will wither and fade.
Prerequisites: MTP and clear, fair and consistent rules without conflicts of interest.
7. Interfaces
Interfaces tend to become the most distinctive internal characteristics of a fully realized ExO.
There’s a good reason for this: at peak productivity, Interfaces empower the enterprise’s management of its SCALE external attributes.
Without such interfaces the ExO cannot scale, thus making them increasingly mission-critical.
Prerequisites: Standardized processes to enable automation, scalable externalities and algorithms (in most cases).
8. Dashboards
ExOs are growing at a rapid pace. To keep up with this pace, the organization needs to have visibility on all areas of the business.
Dashboards which enable visibility allow business, individuals and team assessments to be carried out efficiently and much faster than
ever before. Dashboards also allow you to see problems before they grow into big mistakes.

Since tight control frameworks are critical to managing hyper growth, real-time dashboards used in conjunction with defined “Objectives
& Key Results” (OKRs) are key. OKRs are about focus, simplicity, short(er) feedback cycles, and openness. As a result, insights and
improvements are easier to see and implement.
Prerequisites: Real-time metrics tracked, gathered and analyzed, OKRs implemented, and cultural acceptance by employees.
9. Experimentation
Corporate organization charts are traditionally structured to withstand risk and change. However, in today’s world, the biggest risk is not
taking any risk. The modern rule of competition is “whoever learns fastest, wins.”
Experimentation is effectively “scalable learning”. This makes a culture of continuous experimentation even more important. Large
numbers of bottom-up ideas, properly filtered, always trump top-down thinking, no matter the industry or organization.
Prerequisites: Measurement and tracking of experiments, and cultural acceptance (failure = experience).
10. Autonomy
Charles Darwin discovered an interesting aspect about evolution. He found that the fastest progression of evolution did not happen
when huge populations were exposed to stressful conditions. In fact, those which evolved the fastest under stressful conditions were
small groups of species isolated from the main population. By the same token, small, independent and interdisciplinary teams are critical
to future organizations, especially at the edges.
Prerequisites: MTP (as a gravity well), self-starting employees, and dashboards.
Social Technologies are comprised of seven key elements: Social Objects, Activity Streams, Task Management, File Sharing,
Telepresence, Virtual Worlds and Emotional Sensing. When implemented, these elements create transparency and connectedness and,
most importantly, lower an organization’s information latency.
The entire social paradigm presents several critical implications for ExOs. Organizational intimacy is increased, decision latency is
reduced, knowledge improves and is more widely spread, and serendipity increases. In short, social technologies enable the real-time
enterprise.
Prerequisites: MTP, cloud social tools, and cooperative culture.

Innovation Readiness
19 measures in 5 areas
Attitudes
1. Desire / Hunger
2. Philosophies
Entrepreneurial
orientation
3. Autonomy
4. Competitive
5. Creativity
6. Risk Taking
7. Proactivity
8. Structure
Strategy alignment 9. Strategy alignment
Processes
10. People processes
11. Organizational design
12. Customer focus
13. Co-creation
14. Ecosystem management
15. Speed / Results focus
16. System to select ideas
Learning orientation
17. Commitment to learning
18. Knowledge sharing
19. Open minded

Attitudes
1. Desire/Hunger: Companies that invest in creating Innovation systems are usually driven
by a hunger to do things better and differently. They are often led by people that are
intellectually curious and have a desire to change the world.
2. Philosophies: Every company has a soul and ways of acting. The organizational
philosophies determine what is important in a company. Philosophies define why things
are done and the ways things should be done. Some companies by nature are more
philosophically inclined to be interested in innovation. A low score here is a warning sign
just like in the area of Desire/Hunger. Possible solutions are to visualize the benefits of
innovation and to also look for quick wins to build confidence that your company can be
innovative

Entrepreneurial Orientation
3. Autonomy: Research shows that allowing staff to have a level of autonomy in their decision-making generally creates an
environment that better supports entrepreneurial activities. A high score indicates that your business supports and
encourages individuals and/or teams to identify the best business opportunities and take advantage of them without
constantly referring to their supervisors.
4. Competitiveness: Identify Innovative company managers are very aware of the intensity of competition in their
geographical area. A high score suggests that your business typically adopts a very competitive "undo-the-competitors"
approach that is very aggressive and intense, and that your management team avoids direct contact with competing
businesses.
5. Creativity : This is all about the degree to which your business operates in an innovative manner. A high score indicates
that your management team puts a strong emphasis on developing and marketing new products and services based on
innovation; that you favor experimentation and original approaches to problem solving; that you prefer to develop your own
ways for developing and delivering new products and services; that your company has introduced a very large number of new
lines of products or services over the last five years and that these changes have often been quite dramatic.
6. Risk-taking: Innovative company managers are willing to take risks to innovate, but also recognize the need to manage risk
in an intelligent way. A high score suggests that your business prefers to take on high-risk projects (that offer the chance of a
very high return); that your team believes that you need to introduce "big" and significant innovations to achieve your business
objectives; that you are quick to spend money on potential solutions if you think that problems are holding you back; and that
you are quick to seize opportunities in a bold and aggressive manner if you think they will give a good return.
7. Proactiveness: Taking the initiative was identified by many company leaders & managers as essential for innovation and
entrepreneurial activities. A high score indicates that your business has a strong tendency to be ahead of competitors in
producing novel ideas, products or services, and that competitors typically follow (copy) what you do.
8. Structure: It is the ability to freely adapt to changing circumstances when needed. Successful firms identify, test then
change their structures to ensure success.

Strategic Alignment
9. Strategic Alignment: It is the key link between attitudes and actions. Strategically aligned companies are walking the talk
of innovation. Innovation activities need to fit into the context of the long term direction of your company and be clearly linked
with strategic validated/communicated tracks. Clear structures, budgets and mandates are also needed to support
operationalization of the strategy.
Strategic alignment is:
• Our innovation strategy is clearly communicated so that everyone knows the targets for improvement.
• My organization strategically allocates specific resources (money, staff, materials and space) for innovation to make it
easier for potential innovators.
• There is commitment and support for innovation from top management.

Processes
10. People Processes: In every organization people are what drive innovation. The assessment doesn't focus on how people
are recruited, but rather how they are managed to deliver innovative results. A new line of research on group dynamics has
shown that the key things to get right are to make sure:
• People feel valued
• When people work together, effort is taken to encourage/foster diversity
• People are allowed to voice their own opinions
• Managers act more as facilitators and show leadership
• And the decision procedures are coordinated & objective
If you have a low score on this dimension, try reading The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki for ideas on getting
people working together.
11. Organizational Design: In the area of Innovation and almost every other area of business what is measured and rewarded
happens. A first area of good organizational designs for innovation includes: encouragement to try new ideas, acceptance of
smart failures and rewards for efforts and good tries. (Note: it is important not to reward just success and it is important that
rewards are for individual and team effort.) A second area of good organization design focuses on removing barriers and
increasing work flexibility. If you score low in this area, you might try to read a good book on organizational behavior that
talks about how to reward performance.(The Jericho Principle from Ralf Welborne is a good example...). The right rewards
are more than money alone.
12. Customer Focus: Identify All businesses rely on their customers for their revenue and profitability - and innovation must
take account of customer needs and preferences. A high score indicates that your company has very good knowledge about
customer expectations and needs, that you are very good at getting customer feedback, and that you really know the types of
innovation that your customers will accept or reject. A good customer focus also includes a flexible view of who the
customer is. Is the customer who uses my product, or who pays my bills? A good book could be the Gift of Marcel Mauss.

Processes
13. Co-creation : It is an active, creative and social process based on collaboration between producers and users, which is
initiated by the firm to generate value for customers. It is about working together with the people and organizations that
interact with your company to identify new needs and create customer experiences. Co-creation moves from teaching the
customer to learning from each other. It causes us to leverage our individual and shared experiences together, creating
something that we could not have produced separately. One place a lot of companies fail is with a NIH (Not Invented Here).
If you have an open view on co-creation you will be ready to select the best ideas and solutions regardless of their source. A
high score indicates you are doing well working with partners. A low score means you are probably not developing the best
products and related ecosystems you could and that your cycle to bring a new product/service on the market is probably
longer than your competitors' cycle.
14. Eco-system Management Greatness on your part is not enough. In today's connected world, there is no such thing as an
autonomous innovator. You are an actor within a broader innovation ecosystem. Success in a connected world requires that
you manage your interactions with your business environment. Instead of thinking "If we build it, will people buy it?" you need
to think "If we build it, who will we need to work with to make sure our customers can buy it?" Your score measures how
actively you are working to understand and leverage your business environment for innovation success. (Want to know more?
Read The Wide Lens by Ron Adner.)
15. Speed/Results Focus: Rarely is the first product or idea the right one. Successful innovators usually need to be good at
quick development, quick testing and quick decisions. Equally important, companies need to ensure they are not testing to
test, but testing to deliver business results. Speed without a results focus is a quick way to waste money. SMTM (Show Me
The Money …) focus needs to always be present.
16. Systems to Select Ideas: A lot of research has shown the biggest difference between companies successful at
innovation and new product introduction is not their ability to create new ideas, but their ability to quickly kill bad ones (and
only the bad ones). Your score reflects your use of systematic methods to test ideas early and objectively evaluate the quality
of your ideas and their fit with your corporate context.

Learning Orientation
17. Commitment to Learning: The committed organization considers learning as an important investment that is crucial for
survival. The more an organization values learning, the more likely it is that learning will occur. Most importantly, commitment
to learning is associated with a long-term strategic orientation. Short-term investments will yield long-term gains. For
example, managers in committed organizations expect employees to use company time to pursue knowledge outside the
immediate scope of their work. If an organization does not encourage the development of knowledge, employees will not be
motivated to pursue learning activities.
18. Knowledge Sharing: It refers to collective beliefs or behavioral routines related to the spread of learning among different
units within an organization. It keeps alive the knowledge and information gathered from various sources and serves as a
reference for future action. For example, the marketing department’s experience with customers may be valuable to the R&D
unit in developing products or services to fit customer needs. Learning in an organization results from an accumulation of
individual learning. Because of employee turnover and transfer, intra-organizational knowledge sharing is necessary to
prevent the loss of information. Even if an organization is committed to learning and has a shared vision, learning will be
limited without the accumulation of knowledge. Some scholars argue that learning does not really occur unless an
organization has an effective and efficient system for sharing and re-examining information. Intra-organizational knowledge
sharing does not simply refer to obtaining information from various sources. It includes systematic re-examination and
structuring of information. Experience and lessons must be shared across departments and stored in organizational memory.
Tools like Knowledge-plaza are good examples.
19. Open-minded: It is the willingness to critically evaluate the organization’s operational routine and to accept new ideas.
Firms must cope with rapidly changing technology and turbulent markets. The rate of knowledge obsolescence is high in
most sectors. Even so, lessons learned in the past may still be instructive if the organization has the open-mindedness to
question them. It may be just as important to unlearn old ways as it is to renew or update the knowledge base. Change
management and an outstanding related communication is a key factor here for success.

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