As the ISO standards for innovation management begin to roll out, we wanted to bring together a group of innovation professionals to have a look at some them, and give some thought to whether they are useful to corporate innovators.
Our “ISO standards reading group” included:
- Robyn Bolton, Founder of the consulting firm MileZero, and previously a partner at Innosight
- Jodie Brinkerhoff, VP of Innovation at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport
- Michael Cross, most recently VP of Innovation at the utility Entergy, and previously a VP at CSAA Insurance
- Navin Kunde, Innovation Leader at the engineering and construction firm Black & Veatch
- Ben Little, Director of the Design Innovation program at MassArt, and an executive working in financial services
- John Parello, Principal Engineer at Cisco Innovation Labs.
This conversation was not sponsored by any firm — and none of the participants have a stake in the standards being successful or not. We approached this as an InnoLead editorial project, so that we could be as objective as humanly possible.
ISO 56001 is the requirements standard (the one you can be certified against), and there are 10 other standards in the works, or published, that are intended to serve as guidance. We shared two of the shorter standards docs with our participants — ISO 56002, guidance on innovation management systems, and ISO 56004, guidance on innovation management assessments.
Among the questions discussed:
- Had you heard of the ISO standards previously? If so, what was your impression of them?
- How did that change after reading the standards?
- Could you envision applying these in your organization? Why or why not?
- What benefits would they have?
- Drawbacks?
- Advice for other innovators who haven’t looked at them yet.
“I went into this with skepticism,” Little said, “and as I read, I was like, there’s a lot of really good work in here. Some people put a lot of really brilliant thinking in here.”
“I don’t think [the standards are] a recipe,” Bolton said. “It’s not a guarantee that if you do all of this, all of your innovation dreams will come true. It’s guidance, and if you’re at the very beginning of your innovation journey…start with the end in mind. Know what you have to deliver and put in place the things that will get you those results quickly. If you’re in the middle of your innovation building journey, read the standards and figure out where the gaps are that you have, and then very choicefully kind of pull what will help close those gaps.”
Parello used the metaphor of operating in the restaurant industry. “If I’m running a giant, massive operation, yes, I have to put all those [standards] in there. But if I’m just starting up a little café, I’ve got to scale it down. There’s some things in there that are constantly going to be be correct — like hand washing in a restaurant, or, like proper food handling … So I would go through [the standards] and pick out the ones that I would do and say, “Look, these are just non-negotiable. …And I would start to add in the ones that warrant the size.” Because sometimes you look at these standards and you’re like, “If I followed [them] by the letter of the law, I get McDonald’s. …So I look at the standards like, “OK, this is what a big operation should do. Let me scale it to what fits into my company, and what fits into my dynamic, and where I’m trying to go, and I’ll pick and choose [from the standards.]”
Parello said the standards can give you “really good vocabulary” and terminology, to “give you a consistent way to help explain things” in your organization. “That would be my first and simplest advice. Just copy the terminology and start using it…”
The shorter video below focuses on the group’s advice for other corporate innovators:
Advice for corporate innovators on the new ISO standards
Featured image by Richard Sagredo on Unsplash.
