Wow! Finally. After five years of hard work incorporating 52 countries and 100+ international innovation management experts (including myself) the ISO 56002 standard was eventually published in July 2019.
What does the standard contain?
The ISO standard contains all of the elements that is required to set up a structured management system for innovation. It builds on the overarching standard for management systems (called Annex SL) and follows the directives of all standard management systems. This means that the innovation management standard is easily integrated with other management system standards, such as quality management (ISO 9001), environmental management (ISO 14001) or asset management (ISO 55001).
The key components of the standard consists of the organization’s internal and external context, its leadership, its operations and its innovation process, and then how the innovation management system itself is managed and improved.
How is the standard to be used?
The standard contains valuable information about what to achieve, but nothing about how to achieve it. The standard is a guidance and will help you set structures for your innovation management system (IMS). But to find out what the IMS should contain in terms of products and services you will need to make a thorough investigation and describe your organization’s ambitions and objectives in order to create a full blueprint of your final IMS. To fully align yourself with the standard you will need the advise of seasoned innovation management experts.
ISO 56002 is a voluntary guidance standard. That is, it does not contain requirements such as those used when a standard is offered for “certification”. So the best way to use the standard is as an internationally validated guidebook for how to set up an innovation management system.
How to get it.
The ISO 56002 standard can be purchased and downloaded for $120 from the ISO online store or from your national standards body´s store.
What to do from here…
Purchase and download the ISO 56002 as described above. Create a plan for how to utilize the standard to compose your company’s innovation vision, innovation strategy and innovation policy. Formalize an implementation plan for the IMS and then integrate the best suited services to maximize the performance of the innovation management system. To evaluate how well aligned you currently are to ISO 56002, KPMG has created a free light readiness assessment that you can run to estimate how far from the international standard’s best practices you are today.
If you are curious on what your next steps should be to utilize the ISO standard the international best practices just contact me here or send me an inmail on LinkedIn and I’ll be happy to provide guidance on what to do next.
Very precious content and highly appreciated efforts.