Scoring your Innovation Skills — a quick guide for leaders in the creative and product development industry

10 min readApr 24, 2020

A framework I use for leadership development is called Identify-Build-Drive. It’s a handy guide to score innovation skills. I’ll give a quick overview of the framework, then jump into the scoring tool, and wrap it up with some thoughts on how you can use it in your work.

The Framework

The Identify-Build-Drive framework was created by the former Chief Strategy Officer of PTC, Dr. Barry Cohen. He used this model to define and evaluate leadership capabilities. The framework consist of three categories.

The first is Identify. People with strengths in this category are the strategists, the big thinkers, the one’s who have their finger on the pulse of the market. They are also visionaries who can craft a strategy and rally a team around it. Identifiers are constantly on the hunt to find threats and opportunities. As a personality trait I like to kid around that they can’t help themselves from pointing out problems (threat thinker) or brainstorming a ton of ideas (opportunity thinker). The innovation skills associated to this category are strategic thinking, business acumen, and managing vision.

The second is Build. There are two types of Builders. One is the creative-type, the one “who has the knack”, who finds joy in building products, programs, content. The other is the builder of teams. Rallying a team comes natural to them and moreover they love it. They often make great team or project leads but that isn’t a requirement, they can also be an individual contributor who creates culture, a sense of community. In the scorecard, I focus on the builders of things (content, products, services, programs) versus people. The innovation skills associated to this category are creativity, learning mindset, and innovation management.

The third is Drive. Drivers push projects forward. They have their eyes set on the goal, and incrementally take you through each milestone. They are great problem solvers, especially in the flow of work, so if a fire pops up, no problem, they’ll assess the situation and jump right in to solve it. They tend to be super organized, often get delight from things like checking off boxes or closing a deal, and the best drivers have a good sense of politics and how to work effectively with people. The innovation skills associated to this category are problem solving, drive for results, and interpersonal savvy.

The Innovation Scorecard

The Innovation Scorecard is designed for individuals and teams who want to have a structured approach to assessing their innovation style.

It builds on the Identify-Drive-Build model and frames up innovation into 9 skills. Each skill is measured on a 5-point scale that ranges from novice to leader. The skills are visualized on a star chart.

Strategic Thinking

Identify threats and opportunities.
Frame ideas into coherent frameworks, concepts and processes.
Align strategy with business needs.

Business Acumen

Understand the components of your business such as finance, sales, marketing, operations, products, and services.
Research market trends, products, people, and best practices.
Apply your knowledge to create value for your organization and customers (e.g. profit, savings, quality, safety).

Managing Vision

Creates a vision that is compelling and transformative for the organization.
Rally people with aspirational goals and tangible milestones.
Talk about possibilities, the future, hope, big opportunities.

Creativity

Generate a range of ideas that are unique and valuable.
Connect disparate topics into something new.
Apply creative methods and tools to foster creativity in groups.

Learning Mindset

Curious about ideas, people, processes, etc.
Validate work with research and testing.
Iterate on ideas to improve value and find a better fit in your market.

Innovation Management

Exhibits good judgment in choosing what to build and not to build.
Coordinates projects and teams to build deliverables.
Creates a culture with a set of norms, values, and relationships that optimize team output.

Problem Solving

Using data and experience to understand and break down a problem.
Implements rigorous step-by-step methods to solve problems.
Applies problem solving methods to multiple situations such as working with teams, delivering a product, or transforming a process.

Drive for Results

Committing to get the job done, often exceeding expectations.
Sets milestones, track progress and shares results.
Focused on the bottom line, goals-oriented.

Interpersonal Savvy

Connect with people easily.
Align and collaborate with different people, groups and cultures.
Use communication, strategy and politics to cultivate collaboration.

Scoring Levels

Each skill is measured on five levels ranging from novice to leader. This leveling starts with learning and exhibiting some capabilities (novice and specialist), and expands to greater capacity and impact in the organization (principal and expert), ultimately ending with a mastery level that impacts your organization and the wider market (leader).

0. Not started: I don’t have any skills at this time.

1.Novice: you are learning the skill and are developing a set of limited capacities; often you need guidance to implement this skill

2. Proficient: you are familiar with the range of skills and can implement some of them consistently towards independent or group projects.

3. Advanced: you have deep experience in several dimensions of this skill and frequently apply this skill in your group and sometimes across the organization.

4. Expert: you have deep and broad expertise, which you know how to effectively apply in individual work, in groups and across the organization.

5. Leader: you mastered the skill and consistently make an impact across your organization and in the market.

Innovation Personas

Everyone is going to have a mix of skills in each category. These combinations take shape as persona types. Below is a description of each type with a sample star chart pattern.

Identifier: you are the strategist. You are all about big picture thinking, matching ideas to the business reality, and transforming the organization with a compelling vision. If you overuse this skillset you focus too much on research at the cost of action. You may also overhype the vision or get wrapped up in futurist thinking that doesn’t benefit near term goals.

Builder: you are a hacker, the creative guru. You excel at ideating, take an iterative approach to your work, and have a toolkit of practices and products to bring your idea to life. If you overuse this skillset, you tend to go heads down and lose sight of the mission or critical milestones that deliver your ideas to market.

Driver: you are a powerhouse. You often lead the charge and are trusted as someone who gets the job done. You excel at organization, facilitation, and pivoting when problems occur. If you overuse this skill set, you hyper focus on details, over rotate on a project element, or push so hard that you burn yourself or others out.

Inventor: you are a visionary who can bring ideas to life. You often work at the bleeding edge of your industry and have new and exciting ways to build things. If you overuse this skill set, you can be impatient about timelines, have a tendency to move from one big idea to the next, and lose sight of carrying your project to the finish line.

Captain: you are the strategist who delivers results. Your combination of business, strategy, and operational know-how makes you a natural program or team manager, and you have a talent for guiding projects through complex scenarios. If you overuse this skill, you push forward on a project at the cost of other initiatives in your organization.

Producer: you are a build engine; you can generate ideas, create content, and drive projects to completion. You also have a knack for managing people whether that’s leading a team or coordinating cross-functional efforts. If you overuse this skillset, you may lose sight of the long term game or miss opportunities to pivot on strategic opportunities.

Innovator: you are a jack of all trades; ready to guide strategies; coordinate innovation efforts; and deliver results. If you overuse this skillset, you spread your self too thin or overemphasize one skill at the cost of others; you can also have a tendency to micro manage others because you like to get into the work or feel like you can do it better.

How to use the scorecard

1. Download the template. The template includes a description of the framework and the star chart template. PDF download here.

2. Score the chart. If you are scoring yourself or someone else, the same process is used. Rank each of the 9 skills with the five-point scale. A good place to start is picking a skill you are more familiar with; you’ll have an easier time filling it out and can use this as a benchmark for other skills.

3. Color in your star chart. There are two ways to color the chart. One way is print it out. The other is taking a screen shot from the PDF template and paste the image in PowerPoint or a design tool to add colored slices as shown above; this approach can be a bit finicky but the visual look and feel is pretty sweet.

4. Determine your persona type: Once you have star chart filled out, tally up the scores for each category (Identify, Build, Drive). If the total skills in one category is 25%-30% higher than than another category, it is a dominant category. If all your category scores are similar, you are the Innovator persona type.

When to use the scorecard

People have shared that they like this framework because it is simple and the star chart provides a nice visual “footprint” of their innovation style. There are several ways to use the scorecard either as a self-assessment or with others.

Use Cases

Interviews: structured interviews are really helpful and the scorecard is another tool you can throw in your toolbox. Before an interview, request that the candidate fill out their scorecard, and then use the tool to guide interview questions.
Onboarding: get to know your new teammate (new hire, transfer, short term project) and identify other team members that would compliment or reinforce their skillset.
Manager reviews: get insights onto your staff’s skills and have professional development conversations about their goals. For example, team members can color in their current skills (black blocks below), and then highlight their growth areas (color blocks below). Good time to do this is at the beginning of the planning year, and then review at specific milestones.

Team Workshops: run a team workshop; compare and contrast different skills sets on the team; use the tool to drive discussions on team strengths and gaps; explore combinations for grouping different skills sets on the team.
Self Reviews: reflect on where you are today; envision where you want to be tomorrow.

Sample Questions

If you could snap your finger and all of a sudden be a master in one of the 9 skills, which one would it be and why?
Share a skillset or skill you have developed most recently? What helped or hindered your development in that area?
Share a time that you overused a skill or skillset? What was the impact? How would you do it differently?
One of the benefits of knowing your innovation style is to determine who compliments your work. Can you share which innovator type you work best with and why?
In this highly skilled area, can you share a project where you were top of your game, in the flow, killing it with this skill or skillset? What were the key ingredients that made this project so successful?

Why use this tool?

With any resource there is an investment to use it, here are three reasons to try it out:

It’s aspirational. The tool shows you where you are today, and where you can be “tomorrow”. It’s a living artifact that you can come back to at anytime to review progress and prompt further reflection and discussion.
It’s organized. If someone were to ask what makes someone innovative, I think there would be many paths one could take. With this framework you have a touchstone to orient your thinking. This efficiency enables you to dive right in to the good stuff — hopes, dreams, challenges, growth, success, etc.
It’s easy to use. Three categories, each with three skills. You start by filling in the slices, take stock of your skillset, and then share for feedback and discussion.

Authors

Dr. Ayora Berry & Dr. Barry Cohen