This document will help the user understand why it is beneficial to carry out an Innovation Management Assessment (IMA), what to assess, how to carry out the IMA, and thus maximize the resulting benefits, which are universally applicable to:

— organizations seeking sustained success in their innovation activities;

— organizations performing IMAs;

— users and other interested parties (e.g. customers, suppliers, partners, funding organizations, universities and public authorities) seeking confidence in an organization's ability to manage innovation effectively;

— interested parties seeking to improve communication through a common understanding of Innovation Management (IM), via an assessment;

— providers of training, assessment, or advice in IM;

— developers of related standards;

— academics interested in research related to IMA.

Further, this document is intended to be applicable to:

— all types of organizations, regardless of sector, age, size, or country;

— all approaches to IM regardless of their level of sophistication, and complexity;

— all modalities of managing innovation whether centralized or decentralized;

— all ways to innovate, e.g. internal, collaborative, open, user-, market- or technology-driven innovation;

— all types of innovation such as product, service, process, business model, organizational innovation from incremental to radical.