ISO 56000 Innovation Management

A system is ‘a set of interrelated and interacting elements’. In a Management System, those elements are people, processes and technology. A Management System gives us a business model that steadily strengthens these links but retains flexibility. Linkage is everything and for example if sales is not linked to design, the design people will guess what the customer wants and operations pick up the pieces. To become a serial innovator, you need a System Approach.

The new ISO 56002 Guidance on Innovation Management is written with the common High-Level Structure (HLS) of ISO Management System Standards. It enables integration of different ISO management systems. ISO 9001 adopted this structure in 2015 and when you look at activities like setting objectives, capturing data and data analysis these will integrate easily, as will the vast majority of the Innovation Standard.

This outline of the new Innovation Management System (IMS) Guidance Standard also shows some of the links to ISO 9001:2015.  A requirements version of the IMS standard would come later and be ISO 56001. You can start work on your IMS in preparation for certification. The rationale for certification will be to make an organization more attractive to innovation investors, go‎vernment grants and partnering. 95% of innovators partner with other organizations.

The external and internal issues that affect the organization lead to development of the first steps in an Innovation Strategy. You may have conducted a SWOT analysis and you probably focused on the Weaknesses and Threats to identify risks in your ISO 9001 QMS. With Innovation the Opportunities, and the Threats, give you the drivers for your Innovation Management System.

Which of your products is declining? Which of your customers is going quiet. Innovative businesses look for opportunity first and then calculate the associated risk. Clause 4.2 Interested Parties gets us asking who will be our potential customers for future Innovative offerings. Also, part of the context, is the culture. People want to know how to develop the creative culture that will co-exist with the execution culture of Quality Management. Clause 4.4 is devoted to Culture and Collaboration.

The Innovation principles in ISO 56000 explain the need for leaders who are curious, courageous and look to the future. Naturally, Leaders will also be responsible for developing a culture of Innovation. You will build Innovation into your policy, or mission, statement in clause 5.2. Clause 5.3 Roles and Responsibilities, is often seen as a ‘given’ in ISO 9001, but innovation is a new initiative and you will need innovation champions and may need change agents. 

In clauses 6.1 Opportunity and Risk and the opportunities related to the issues identified in 4 are prioritized and risks calculated. 6.2 Innovation Objectives points to developing an action plan containing measurable objectives. This all fits closely with the Risk Analysis in ISO 9001. Clause 6.3 Structure makes you consider how you will structure Innovation into your organization. It needs to be flat, flexible and networked. 6.4 is where we initiate our Portfolio of Innovation initiatives and where we start to build traction. 

Clause 7 gives you everything you need to enable Innovation. Knowledge is the lifeblood of Innovation and is a short clause 7.1.6 in ISO 9001 but gets a lot more attention in ISO 56000. You should look at developing an IT infrastructure which enables the management of knowledge. 7.2 is Competence, and creativity is only one of the innovation competences. Clause 7.2 in the standard provides considerable detail on competences needed. Awareness 7.3 and Communication 7.4 are very similar to 9001.

7.5 is documentation and although ISO 9001 does not now require a manual, this is where you should capture your Innovation practices, given that many of them will be new. List the tools you will use in 7.6. Strategic Intelligence 7.7 feeds the knowledge base and new products and services will have intellectual property (IP) related to them and which needs protecting. Intellectual Property (IP) is clause 7.8 in this section. 

Implementing Innovation Management is a major change. You initiate change by getting an early win. That early win is going to come here in clause 8 using your innovation process. Your innovation process is the heart of your Innovation Management System. The process starts by identifying opportunities, collecting data which you then analyze to arrive at a definition of the opportunity. You find concept solutions and a ‘Proof of Concept’ is developed to find a limited number of preferred solutions. At this point we may choose to protect the IP.

We validate with ‘Proof of Concept’ and ‘Ease of Use’ is Developed. Business partner relationships are solidified and risks are mitigated. We then deliver using a value proposition focused on benefits and not features. Clause 8.3 will have a lot of alignment with clause 8.3 in ISO 9001:2015. I suggest you hold off trying to mesh them immediately. Learn from this first experience and understand the process. This process has a bigger scope than 8.3 in 9001:2015.

Metrics in the early creative steps may be binary. Clause 9.1 gives good guidance on the types of Innovation performance indicators, first at the input to the system and process, then for throughput where we measure speed and level of engagement and finally at output where we measure results. This clause does, of course, include the Internal Audit 9.2, and the Management Review, 9.3 both of which are quite similar to ISO 9001:2015. 

Once a solution is delivered there is always learning to be gained. Weaknesses and gaps should be dealt with rapidly. An ISO Management System forces us to take action.