In this chapter we present the framework that moves innovation from scattered efforts, hostage to personal connections and chance, to a regular practice that can be understood and improved: the difference between a process and a system, the system’s six stages and where decisions sit within them, and the requirements of the international standard for innovation management systems, ISO 56001.
One organization adopted a six-stage “innovation procedure,” published it in an elegant handbook, and hung its flowchart in the building’s corridors. A year later, a review revealed that dozens of proposals were still sitting in the “evaluation” stage with no decision, that two successful pilots had stalled at their conclusion because no one had been assigned to run the solution, and that most employees did not even know how their idea could reach the first stage.
This organization had a written process, but it did not have a system. The flowchart describes the road; traveling it requires someone to decide at every turn, someone to fund, someone to take over the solution at the end, and a channel that connects the road to people where they work. These elements, which make the road passable, are the focus of this chapter.
After studying this chapter, the reader should be able to:
Organizations usually have more ideas than capacity to test and implement them. The problem, more often than not, is the absence of a pathway that singles out the important opportunities, gives resources to the promising ones, stops those that are not progressing, and ties success to adoption. This is where we need to distinguish between two concepts that are frequently confused.
The international series of standards defines an innovation management system as a set of interrelated and interacting elements of an organization aimed at realizing value (International Organization for Standardization [ISO], 2025). This covers managing the daily flow of opportunities and involving people in it, as well as the governance that determines who decides and how resources are allocated. It now becomes clear what happened in the opening case: the process was there, but the system was missing.
Models of the innovation process essentially agree on a path that begins with searching for opportunities, moves on to selecting what merits investment, then to implementation, and finally to capturing value (Tidd & Bessant, 2021). In this book we break that path down into six stages that operate in a continuous cycle: strategy, opportunity capture, evaluation and selection, initiative setup, pilot, and scaling. The first stage is foundational; the next three form the engine of the system, turning inputs into projects; and the last two carry the solution into practice.
| Stage | Purpose | Output | Common failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy | Steering what enters the system | Search fields, challenge questions and criteria | An open call for any idea, with no priorities |
| Opportunity capture | Discovering needs and opportunities worth considering | Opportunities described and grouped, kept separate from solutions | Storing ideas instead of understanding needs |
| Evaluation and selection | Determining what merits the cost of the next round of learning | A declared decision: explore, merge, defer or decline | Long waits with no decision or response |
| Initiative setup | Turning the opportunity into a learning project | A leader, a small team, a sponsor, initial funding and hypotheses | No unit identified to take over the solution later |
| Pilot | Testing the solution in a real-world setting | Evidence on value, adoption and cost | A pilot without success criteria defined in advance |
| Scaling and operation | Turning the solution into a sustainable operational capability | An owner, a budget, training and indicators | A successful pilot that stalls because no one took it over |
These stages are not a rigid production line. An initiative may return to an earlier stage, change direction, or stop. The value of the system lies in its shared language and clear decisions and responsibilities, combined with enough flexibility to accommodate the different paths initiatives take. In Part III of the book we examine in detail what happens within these stages: understanding problems, developing solutions, experimentation, and adoption and scaling.
Every transition between stages ends in a decision, and that decision takes one of five forms: continue, continue with modifications, merge with another initiative, suspend temporarily, or stop. It should rest on what has changed in the evidence, the risks and the expected value, independent of the effort already spent or the standing of the person behind the idea.
Yet the absence of a decision is more damaging to the system than a wrong one. An initiative that is neither accepted nor rejected remains in what we call decision limbo: it consumes its owners’ attention, nothing is learned from it, and it teaches those around it that taking the initiative is not worth the trouble. This is what happened to dozens of proposals in the opening case. A good system prevents this limbo through three simple means:
These means may look procedural, but their effect is above all human: a reasoned response preserves the idea owner’s sense of being valued and teaches them something, and a published time frame respects their time. We return to decision rights and gates in Chapter 10.
The system’s value begins at the opportunity capture stage, the stage that connects the system to people. Organizations often limit this stage to a single channel removed from everyday work, such as an online platform, an annual competition or a standalone center, and wait for people to bring their ideas to it. As a result, only an enthusiastic few reach it, while most people, and with them their close-up knowledge of problems, remain outside the system.
The system best able to capture opportunities is the one that goes to people where they work: in unit meetings, in performance reviews, in everyday work tools, and in dealings with beneficiaries. At a university, for example, capture channels widen when some course assignments and projects become an entry point into the innovation ecosystem, rather than the innovation center remaining an entity cut off from the classrooms and unknown to many students.
Trace the last ten opportunities that entered your organization’s innovation system: where did they come from? If they all came from one channel or from the same people, the system sees only a small part of the organization.
The first edition of ISO 56001 was published in September 2024. It specifies requirements for an innovation management system that an organization can use to develop and demonstrate its innovation capability (International Organization for Standardization [ISO], 2024). It differs from the guidance standard ISO 56002 in setting out requirements that can be audited and certified by accredited independent bodies (Fernandez & Swart, 2025). The standard follows the harmonized structure of the International Organization for Standardization’s management system standards and comprises seven main clauses:
Clause 8 specifies five innovation processes: identifying opportunities, creating concepts, validating concepts, developing solutions, and deploying solutions (ISO, 2024). These processes correspond to the stages of the system in this book as follows:
| ISO 56001 process | Corresponding stages of the system | Where it is covered in the book |
|---|---|---|
| Identifying opportunities | Strategy; opportunity capture | Chapters 4 and 11 |
| Creating concepts | Evaluation and selection; initiative setup | Chapters 12 and 13 |
| Validating concepts | Initiative setup; pilot | Chapter 14 |
| Developing solutions | Pilot | Chapters 12 and 14 |
| Deploying solutions | Scaling and operation | Chapter 15 |
The standard is a useful organizational tool for diagnosis and comparison, but it does not produce innovation by itself. Certification can become a new form of innovation theater if effort shifts toward completing documentation rather than improving the actual flow of opportunities, decisions and value. The more productive question when applying it is: has the road from idea to value become shorter and clearer for those who travel it?
Examine your organization’s innovation system stage by stage. Each stage has a sign that it is working and a sign that it has broken down. Start with the stage where the sign of breakdown is most evident, for it is the bottleneck that determines the performance of the whole system.
| Stage | A sign that it is working | A sign that it has broken down |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy | Employees know the current search fields and challenge questions | Proposals scattered in every direction |
| Opportunity capture | Opportunities come from a variety of units and levels | A few recurring sources, or a single channel |
| Evaluation and selection | Every proposal receives a reasoned response within a published time frame | Proposals stuck without a decision for months |
| Initiative setup | Every initiative has a leader, a sponsor, hypotheses and a likely operating unit | Initiatives that belong “to everyone” and are owned by no one |
| Pilot | Success criteria are defined before the pilot | Every pilot is declared a success |
| Scaling and operation | Successful solutions are handed over to an owner and a budget | Successful pilots that stall once they end |