“Paris is always a good idea.” – Audrey Hepburn
I can honestly say I was thinking something just like that when I booked what was to be my first trip to Paris in February 2020. I had just gotten back from Abu Dhabi where I was teaching a certification class on Innovation Methods and Tools. I just knew that in May 2020 I was going to be joining my ISO Technical Committee (TC) 279 colleagues in France to continue writing the ISO 56008 standard on Innovation Measurements & Metrics.
The rumblings of virus were starting to pick up steam in the news but outside of Wuhan China, nothing else seemed to be shutting or even slowing down. As far as I knew, I would be sharing my innovation research and experiences with the group and trying to squeeze in some Paris sightseeing before or after the all-day / weeklong conference.
What is that quote about the best laid plans?
Somewhere in my gut I had a feeling how this might play out, but I went ahead and booked my travel anyway. Needless to say, I didn’t get a chance to visit the Eiffel Tower this month or greet my TC279 colleagues with the handshakes and in-person great-to-see-yous I thought I was going to be able to do in February.
That does not mean that we didn’t meet and make progress on Innovation Measurements & Metrics. This past week, using Zoom and other collaboration software, my colleagues from over 15 countries and I got together and shared best practices and measures they have used to drive, monitor, and improve innovation efforts. 9:00AM East Coast time was perfect for me but early for my friends in California and late for my friends in Japan.
This meeting brought a new approach to help improve our creative process. We took the sections that have been drafted to date, re-summarized each down to their most fundamental components (which we are now calling content-bricks) and have started to capture the most relevant learnings related to each one. Since last year, TC297 has collectively worked through multiple iterations and drafts of various sections of what will gradually become a standard.
The plan is for us to take the better part of the summer to keep refining, capturing, and improving the most important themes for Innovation Measurements & Metrics.
Some on the team have been working to capture research on those who are going to end up using this standard when finished. Work has been done to identify things like “pain points” and the value that each person would get out of a standard like Innovation Measurements & Metrics. Obviously, the people who could benefit from a standard like this is diverse, so we also went through the exercise of synthesizing our analysis into personas.
As more is created, we will continue to share updates for anything that we are allowed. If you have questions about Innovation Measures & Metrics or the other Innovation Management standards, reach out to us at info@everevolving.biz.