The Leadership Network's global innovation expert Rowan Gibson has put together a checklist for senior executives to help them plan their innovation initiatives. Rowan Gibson consults for Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Compaq and BMW.

1. Answer these questions before taking innovation to next level.
Your Innovation Checklist

2. As your company gears up to take innovation to a
higher level, here are some practical questions to
ask yourself:
1.Do we have a core set of people, distributed throughout the business, trained in the tools, process-
es and protocols of business concept innovation?
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2. Have we built a systematic process for continually generating and managing novel strategic
insights, and for sharing them companywide?
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3. Are we using all the available means to improve the quantity and the quality of new ideas – from
inside, outside and across our organization?
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4. Are we systematically innovating across all the components of our business model, or are our com-
pany’s innovation efforts primarily focused on products and services?
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5. Are we using the right evaluative criteria at every stage of the opportunity development process,
or are some potentially valuable ideas being killed off prematurely?
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6. Are our innovators generating ideas that are sufficiently radical to deliver breakthrough business
performance (as opposed to ideas for making incremental improvements), and is our company
stimulating and encouraging them to do so?
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7. Have we designed an“innovation architecture”that gives strategic coherence and consistency to
our opportunity portfolio?
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8. Have we built mechanisms for rapidly reallocating resources behind new opportunities (not just
new products), along with a robust innovation pipeline for managing and commercializing those
opportunities?
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9. Is our innovation pipeline capable of managing growth opportunities with very different time-
scales and risk profiles?
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10. Are we dynamically balancing the supply of innovation ideas and the demand for innovation
ideas inside our company?
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11. Are we using a comprehensive set of metrics to measure innovation performance – including
inputs, throughputs, and outputs – and are we linking it to management compensation?
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12. Have we put the necessary systems, structures and processes in place to make innovation a self-
sustaining enterprise capability, and do we see this reflected in tangible daily activities across and
beyond the company?
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5. The Leadership Network®
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innovation successfully?
Attend Rowan Gibson’s Innovation Excellence Masterclass and
learn how to truly add value to your organization through
innovation.
Rowan Gibson is“one of the most recognized thought leaders
in business innovation”(Forbes). He is a top keynote speaker,
management educator and consultant in 62 countries across
the globe, and has been a“strategic secret weapon”and change
catalyst for a long list of Fortune 500 companies.
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