ISO Innovation Standards: The Good, the Bad, and the Missing

In 2020, the International Standards Organization, most famous for its Quality Management Systems standard, published ISO 56000, Innovation Management—Fundamentals and Vocabulary. Since then, ISO has released eight additional innovation standards.

But is it possible to create international standards for innovation, or are we killing creativity?

That’s the question that InnoLead founder and CEO Scott Kirsner and I debated over lunch a few weeks ago.  Although we had heard of the standards and attended a few webinars, but we had never read them or spoken with corporate innovators about their experiences.

So, we set out to fix that.

Scott convened an all-star panel of innovators from Entergy, Black & Veatch, DFW Airport, Cisco, and a large financial institution to read and discuss two ISO Innovation Standards: ISO 56002, Innovation management – Innovation management systems – Requirements and ISO 56004, Innovation Management Assessment – Guidance.

The conversation was honest, featured a wide range of opinions, and is absolutely worth your time to watch.

Here are my three biggest takeaways.

The Standards are a Good Idea

Innovation doesn’t have the best reputation.  It’s frequently treated as a hobby to be pursued when times are good and sometimes as a management boondoggle to justify pursuing pet ideas and taking field trips to fun places.

However, ISO Standards can change how innovation is perceived and supported.

Just as ISO’s Quality Management Standards established a framework for quality, the Innovation Management Standards aim to do the same for innovation. They provide shared fundamentals and a common vocabulary (ISO 56000), requirements for innovation management systems (ISO 56001 and ISO 56002), and guidance for measurement (ISO 56004), intellectual property management (ISO 56005), and partnerships (ISO 56003). By establishing these standards, organizations can transition innovation from a vague “trust me” proposition to a structured, best-practice approach.

The Documents are Dangerous

However, there’s a caveat: a little knowledge can be dangerous. The two standards I reviewed were dense and complex, totaling 56 pages, and they’re among the shortest in the series. Packed with terminology and suggestions, they can overwhelm experienced practitioners and mislead novices into thinking they have How To Guide for success.

Innovation is contextual.  Its strategies, priorities, and metrics must align with the broader organizational goals.  Using the standards as a mere checklist is more likely to lead to wasted time and effort building the “perfect” innovation management system while management grows increasingly frustrated by your lack of results.

The Most Important Stuff is Missing

Innovation is contextual, but there are still non-negotiables:

• Leadership commitment AND active involvement: Innovation isn’t an idea problem. It’s a leadership problem.  If leadership delegates innovation, fails to engage in the work, and won’t allocate required resources, you’re efforts are doomed to fail.
• Adjacent and Radical Innovations require dedicated teams: Operations and innovation are fundamentally different. The former occurs in a context of known knowns and unknowns, where experience and expertise rule the day. The latter is a world of unknown unknowns, where curiosity, creativity, and experimentation are required. It is not reasonable to ask someone to live in both worlds simultaneously.
• Innovation must not be a silo: Innovation cannot exist in a silo. Links must be maintained with the core business, as its performance directly impacts available resources and influences the direction of innovation initiatives.

These essential elements are mentioned in the standards but are not clearly identified. Their omission increases the risk of further innovation failures.

Something is better than nothing

The standards aren’t perfect.  But one of the core principles of innovation is to never let perfection get in the way of progress.

Now it’s time to practice what we preach by testing the standards in the real world, scrapping what doesn’t work, embracing what does, and innovating and iterating our way to better.