A framework for the assessment of an organisation's innovation excellence

Abstract Most firms competing in the global economy are paying increasing attention to innovation as the key driver of competitiveness. Innovation's key dimensions address the quality, the quantity and the speed of introducing innovations. With an increasing rate of change in the global economy, especially after the onset of the 2008–2009 economic crisis, innovation management emerges as a powerful way to facilitate a firm's adaptation to new conditions. However, despite a widespread acceptance of innovation's importance by the leadership of most companies, there is a general dissatisfaction with the results realised from innovation investments. For any organisation to address effectively the innovation challenge, its leadership must properly define the innovation system and process and apply sound quality and innovation management principles, as was done in the development of quality management and finance management. This requires the periodic assessment not only of innovation outputs, i.e. new products, services or business models, but also of inputs that determine a firm's innovation capability and the innovation process itself. Managing the effectiveness of the innovation process requires a balanced set of innovation metrics related to all innovation drivers, i.e. leadership, culture and people participation together with innovation results, such as time to market and financial metrics. This paper describes an integrated framework for the systematic assessment of an organisation's quality, i.e. value-generating capability of its innovation management and the timely identification of ways to measure and improve it. Keywords: holistic performance assessmentquality as current value-generating capacityinnovation as future value-generating capabilityinnovation performance profilesmulti-purpose framework for strategic management Acknowledgements This paper is dedicated to the Founder and Editor of Total Quality Management Professor Gopal Kanji who sadly passed away in June 2010.