Week 17, 2021—Issue #148
ISO 56002:2019: Elements, Principles, and Guidelines
Each week: three ideas on the future of work. This week: three ideas on ISO56002 and Innovation Management Systems.
I’ve must have mentioned taking an innovation management course half a dozen times by this point. Time now to tell you what it was all about.
ISO 56002:2019 is a new international guidance standard for “all kinds of organizations” looking to establish and maintain an Innovation Management System (IMS). Here’s what you need to know:
1. Elements
Innovation is the process with which organizations realize the value of new products, services, or business models, etcetera. It’s end-to-end, multifaceted, and complex. In short, it’s a system. And as with any system, it contains many interconnected elements. Specifically, and in accordance with other ISO standards, there are seven such elements (see the black, all-cap headings in the diagram; external and internal context are one) that work together to help the organization become and remain innovative.
2. Principles
The elements help us define the innovation landscape, but they don’t tell us what to do or how to act. That’s where the principles come into play. There are eight such principles (see the gray boxes above and below the diagram) that help to direct and inform action. Each contains multitudes and each deserves extended treatment. But as a case in point: refer back to w72021 for an example of what it might take to “promote culture in support of both creativity and execution”.
3. Guidance
Elements and principles combine to provide guidelines for how to build and maintain innovation management systems. Emphasis on guidelines. ISO 56002:2019 is not a specification document; it doesn’t prescribe specific tools, methods, and targets, etc. The guidelines are decidedly generic (e.g. organizations should “balance linear and non-linear planning and processes”) and primarily serve to provide us with a common language and mental model for how to think about organizational innovation.
ISO 56002:2019 was 10 years in the making and involved contributors from 50-or-so national standard organizations. It’s part of the ISO 56000 series. Read more on www.iso.org.
So, how useful is this new standard? And is it really applicable to “all types of innovations” and “all types of organizations” as this summary suggests?
It depends.
Yes, the standard is useful in that it codifies decades worth of innovation research and best practices into a single system with a shared terminology. And yes, the guidelines are applicable to most any organization.
But no, the standard is not useful as a checklist or an innovation how-to. It’s not meant to be. Organizations that want or need practical guidance will need to look elsewhere.
Specifically, they will need to look towards a growing cadre of Innovation Management Professionals that have the know-how and experience needed to translate these guidelines into practices that are contextually appropriate for the individual organization.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time: Make it matter.
/Andreas
PS. Oh, and another thing: I can’t help but think that the standard was written with traditional command-and-control organizations in mind. Nothing wrong with that; that’s 95% of the market! But I do wonder what an IMS would and should look like within evolutionary organizations like Haier or Nucor?
