An innovation standard can be thought of as the skeleton that the human body is built on.
An innovation management standard is needed to serve as a foundational skeleton to develop an innovation management system (IMS) especially in terms of:
(A) providing elements
(B) types of requirements
(C) detailed clause and subclause descriptions in a common language to achieve sensible exchanges of necessary information
Standards provide a holistic A-Z comprehensive approach to innovation that will cover support, direct and indirect as well as administrative innovation activities. Standards also provide the basis for a common language for innovation and thus make these standards transferable from one entity to another from both within the company and without, whether different divisions and departments or stakeholders and/or supply chains. Standards also provide a means for training and certification of both individuals and organizations. This means that the standards would be available both privately and publicly on both local and international scales. Standards imply standardization for common use and development or in other words it enables sharing and the ability to build upon each other’s work as well as to give feedback and direction to move forward in a unified way to some future point of need and/or desire. A lack of standards and standardization makes it virtually unreasonable and incompatible to work collaboratively together.
For example, consider the sharing of electricity. An electrical receptacle needs a set voltage as well as a mechanism to join male to female transfer points. Over time the receptacle can become more sophisticated: a grounding plug or prong has been added to the input output and of a common carrying electrical wire. Later, a different grounding mechanism has been developed that provides grounding without a third prong. Having a set standard such as an exact voltage allows for common development. North American and European voltages are quite different from each other and require a converter or translator in order to utilize local power to be used with foreign equipment. These voltages are two set and different standards but consider if there was hundreds of different voltages – - then hundreds of different converters would be required. This can sometimes be seen in devices used to connect to a laptop computer. One brands converter may be quite different than another’s and make it impossible to obtain power without the exact and precise converter from a specific company . The requirements are just incompatible because of a lack of a standard. Working together is arduous and inefficient to say the least to the point of making it too frustrating to have disparate elements even attempt to work together. On the other hand if the computer laptop industry embraced a standardization of converters, compatibility and modularity would come to the forefront – - different equipment could work together effectively and efficiently.
The essential requirements of six of the most important elements: (1) culture, (2) leadership, (3) resources, (4) processes, (5) monitoring and measuring, and (6) improvement and corrective action, can only be achieved when common standards and language are utilized to build an IMS. Standards and standardization are the building blocks of working together in a synergistic cross-functional way. Without standards any notion of building a system is like embracing chaos instead of organization and focus. Standards bring harmony and compatibility. Thus standardization brings about “a highly structured set of norm-setting documents, describing all aspects of an innovation management system, by its six elements”. Standards and specific language (with common concepts) walk hand in hand.
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