Innovation management has moved beyond isolated acts of inspiration to become a discipline with processes, metrics and governance. Innovating systematically means designing a funnel capable of capturing many ideas, filtering them against explicit criteria and transforming the best ones into products, services or processes that generate value. The international methodological reference for that purpose is the ISO 56000 family of standards, which provides common vocabulary, principles and an auditable innovation management system — a parallel to the quality logic of ISO 9001.
In this article we describe, from a consulting practice perspective, how to build an end-to-end innovation pipeline: from the generation and capture of ideas through to agile prototyping, return measurement and the errors that most often derail these programmes. The goal is for any organisation to be able to move from accidental innovation to governed innovation.
What Innovation Management Is and Why Standardise It
Innovation management is the set of coordinated activities for directing and controlling an organisation with respect to innovation. The standard ISO 56002:2019 sets guidelines for an innovation management system based on eight principles, including value realisation, future-oriented leadership, a culture that tolerates intelligent failure and the management of uncertainty. Unlike ISO 9001, ISO 56002 is not certifiable as such, but it provides a high-level structure compatible with other management systems.
Standardising innovation does not mean bureaucratising it. It means making what works repeatable: ensuring that idea capture does not depend on a forgotten suggestion box, that the decision to fund a prototype follows known criteria and that the lessons from failed projects are documented. ISO 56003:2019 specifically addresses the tools and methods for innovation partnerships — a critical point when working with start-ups, universities or technology providers.
The Innovation Funnel: From Idea to Value
The most widely used model is the innovation funnel, divided into three broad stages. In the divergence phase, the goal is volume: many ideas, without premature judgement, drawn from employees, customers, technology scouting and market signals. In the convergence phase, ideas are filtered against criteria of desirability (does the customer want it?), feasibility (can we build it?) and economic viability (is it profitable?). In the execution phase, surviving ideas are turned into prototypes, pilots and, eventually, scaled products.
A useful reference metric is the stage conversion rate. In mature programmes it is common for roughly 10 to 15 out of every 100 ideas captured to pass the first screening, three or four to reach prototype and one to reach the market. Knowing those ratios allows you to dimension how many ideas must be generated to achieve one launch per year and avoids the frustration of teams who expect every idea to succeed.
Open Innovation: Capturing Ideas Beyond the Organisation's Walls
The concept of open innovation, popularised by Henry Chesbrough, rests on a simple idea: relevant knowledge is distributed, and no organisation monopolises talent. Open innovation combines outside-in flows (incorporating external knowledge through partnerships, licences or start-up acquisitions) and inside-out flows (bringing underutilised internal technology to market through licences or spin-offs).
In practice, the most commonly used mechanisms are open innovation challenges, corporate accelerator programmes, hackathons and collaborative ideation platforms. For these to work, intellectual property must be clearly delineated from the outset through non-disclosure agreements and explicit ownership clauses. Here ISO 56003 provides a framework for structuring those collaborations and sharing risks and benefits transparently.
An indispensable complement to open innovation is technology watch and competitive intelligence, standardised in Spain by the UNE 166006 standard. Its function is to systematise the capture of signals from the environment — patents, scientific publications, competitor moves, emerging regulation — so that the innovation funnel is fed by evidence rather than solely by internal intuition. An organisation that monitors its environment detects opportunities earlier and, above all, detects substitution threats that could make its business model obsolete.
Innovation Horizons: Managing the Short and Long Term Simultaneously
One of the classic tensions in innovation management is balancing the exploitation of the current business with the exploration of the future business — what the literature calls organisational ambidexterity. The three-horizons model helps structure that tension. Horizon 1 groups incremental improvements to the core, which generate today's revenues and carry low risk. Horizon 2 encompasses adjacent innovations that extend the business into nearby markets or products, carrying moderate risk. Horizon 3 contains high-risk, long-term transformational bets that could redefine the company.
The most common management error is to fund and measure all three horizons using the same criteria. Demanding the same short-term return from a Horizon 3 bet as from a Horizon 1 improvement guarantees that the former will never prosper, because it will be systematically defeated in budget allocation. This is why mature programmes separate the governance, metrics and funding of each horizon and accept that Horizon 3 uncertainty is managed through learning metrics (validated hypotheses) rather than traditional financial ones.
Agile Prototyping and Hypothesis Validation
The difference between a nice idea and a profitable innovation is validation. The Lean Startup approach proposes the build-measure-learn cycle: build a minimum viable product (MVP), measure how the market responds and learn whether to pivot or persevere. Each idea is translated into falsifiable hypotheses (value and growth hypotheses) that are tested with cheap experiments before committing significant budget.
Agile prototyping applies that logic to development: short sprints, incremental deliveries and continuous review with real users. Techniques such as the design sprint allow a team to move from a problem to a customer-tested prototype in a single week. The key is to minimise the cost of failure: failing early and cheaply is the most efficient way to discover what deserves serious investment.
Innovation Metrics and Dashboard
What is not measured cannot be managed. An innovation dashboard balances three families of indicators: input indicators (number of ideas captured, R&D budget, hours invested), process indicators (mean time from idea to prototype, stage conversion rate) and output indicators (percentage of revenue from products launched in the past three years, portfolio return on innovation investment).
| Dimension | Closed innovation | Open innovation |
|---|---|---|
| Source of ideas | Internal R&D | Internal + external ecosystem |
| Speed | Slower | Faster with partnerships |
| Discovery cost | High and borne alone | Shared with partners |
| Intellectual property | Entirely owned | Shared or licensed |
| Main risk | Market blind spots | Collaboration governance |
Steps for Implementing an Innovation Management Programme
- Define the strategy and innovation appetite: decide which horizons to pursue (core improvement, adjacencies or disruption) and reserve explicit budget for each.
- Create the capture channel: implement a platform or process accessible to everyone, so that any person can submit ideas in a minimal common format.
- Establish evaluation committees: with published criteria and a fixed decision calendar, preventing ideas from languishing in indefinite limbo.
- Allocate resources for the prototyping phase: small, fast budgets for experiments, separated from the annual operating budget.
- Measure and communicate: publish the dashboard, recognise teams and, above all, document the lessons from discarded projects.
Common Errors That Derail Innovation Programmes
The first is innovation theatre: flashy hackathons and motivational posters with no real budget and no capacity to bring anything into production. The second is the absence of screening criteria, which leads to decisions based on hierarchy rather than evidence. The third is punishing failure, which dries up the flow of ideas because no one wants to take a risk. The fourth — very common — is failing to separate innovation funding from the operating budget: when cuts are made, the first thing to fall is the company's future.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ISO 56002 certifiable?
Not in the traditional sense. ISO 56002 provides guidelines for implementing an innovation management system but does not establish certifiable requirements in the way ISO 9001 does. It serves as a self-assessment and improvement framework and is compatible with the high-level structure of other management systems.
How much budget should be allocated to innovation?
It depends on the sector and risk appetite, but a practical rule is the 70-20-10 model: 70% to improving the business core, 20% to adjacencies and 10% to transformational bets. What matters is not the absolute figure, but that the innovation budget is protected and not sacrificed in every quarterly adjustment.
How do I prevent ideas from getting lost in a suggestion box?
By assigning a process owner, a fixed evaluation committee calendar and a commitment to respond to every idea submitted. The motivation of contributors is maintained when they receive feedback — even if the idea is rejected — along with an explanation of the criterion applied.
Open or closed innovation?
They are not mutually exclusive. Most organisations combine internal R&D with external partnerships depending on the horizon: the closest to the core is typically developed in-house, while transformational bets are explored with partners to share risk and accelerate learning.
Conclusion
The systematic management of ideas turns innovation into an organisational capability rather than a matter of luck. A well-designed funnel, fed by open innovation, validated through agile prototyping and monitored by an honest dashboard, allows good ideas to find their way to market while bad ones die early and cheaply. The ISO 56000 framework provides the language and structure to audit that system without stifling it. At Summum Consulting we design innovation pipelines tailored to each organisation's maturity level, balancing the creative freedom that innovation demands with the process discipline that makes it profitable and sustainable over time.