Overview

The six dimensions framework covers the elements that are essential for your company to innovate successfully. All six dimensions are interconnected and must work together smoothly to be effective and because of this, it is important that all dimensions are equally developed. Relative weakness in one dimension will impact innovation delivery overall.

Since each company is unique, boosting innovation performance requires making tailor-made, practical improvements to the six dimensions. The first step to growing your innovation ability is to evaluate where your company is today on these six dimensions using a service called the Innovation Health Check.

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This is about the strategic results your company wants to achieve using innovation. It is about being clear on what “innovation” means for the company (and what it is not) as well as it’s strategic importance and the types of benefits expected. It also includes the value it should deliver and how much the company will invest in it over the strategic period. This dimension is key to establishing why the company innovates and the direction it wishes to take.

Innovation is a team sport and as in any team, the players need to know what their role is and what they should expect from their teammates. This dimension covers the “who does what” to deliver innovation across the company. It includes the roles, responsibilities, accountabilities and the hierarchical and functional relationships. Companies with a clear, understood and coherent innovation organisation are able to move forward quickly.

This dimension concerns the means your company has to deliver innovation and includes all the functions that contribute to delivery. It covers the knowledge, skills and capabilities available internally as well as those accessible via partnerships and collaboration. Companies who are have secured the right skills and capabilities have a strong ability to deliver.

This dimension is about how your company delivers innovation; the operational workflows it uses to help things run smoothly and efficiently. It is about ensuring that the right teams do the right things at the right time and nothing important is missed. Your company is unique so it needs it’s own processes. Not too heavy and not too light, not too many and not too few. Companies with the right blend of processes avoid wasted effort. Below is a list of some innovation process examples:

  • New Product Development
  • Industrialisation
  • Commercialisation
  • Project Management
  • Programme Management
  • Knowledge Management
  • Intellectual Property Management
  • Collaborative/Open innovation
  • R&D tax credit (CIR)
  • Idea Generation
  • Customer Insight
  • Consumer Insight

The passion, motivation, clarity and engagement of your people provides the energy needed to deliver the company’s innovation vision. This dimension therefore covers the strength of peoples’ connection to innovation in the company, the leadership and management behaviours associated with innovation as well as staff recognition and the overall innovation culture of the company.

You only know if you are on track to deliver your innovation ambition if you can measure progress. This is about being able to meaningfully and regularly measure the performance of innovation across the organisation. It also includes taking the right actions to ensure delivery stays on track. Many different types of performance indicator can be applied to products, projects, programmes, teams, functions and the company as a whole, but the main thing is to have just the right number, applied in the right way.