Two years ago we launched a free version of Innometrikz®, our audit tool for mapping innovation culture in organisations. The full audit surveys the entire organisation and provides the management team with a detailed report across twelve domains. The free self-assessment is the entry point: one person fills in a shorter questionnaire and receives a personal report immediately.
Since then, 174 professionals from a wide range of sectors have completed the self-assessment. We have now analysed that data, together with the results of the full Innometrikz® audits at organisations in healthcare, manufacturing, government and biotech, surveying more than 2,000 employees in total.
The results confirm what we have long suspected: innovation rarely fails because of a lack of ambition. The will is there. What is missing is the ability to turn that will into results. And that ability is not where most leaders think it is.
The 12 building blocks of the Cromax® framework
Both the self-assessment and the full Innometrikz audit are built on the Cromax® model. Cromax® is a framework that brings together 90 scientifically validated principles from organisational psychology, management science and innovation studies. The model organises these principles into a matrix along two axes.
The vertical axis distinguishes three levels within the organisation: the individual (do employees have the right mindset and skills?), the team (can teams collaborate constructively around innovation?) and leadership (do leaders create the conditions for innovation to thrive?).
The horizontal axis follows four phases of the innovation process: orientation (do we know where we are heading?), ideation (can we generate innovative solutions?), promotion (do ideas gain traction and reach decision-makers?) and implementation (can we actually turn ideas into reality?).
Together, these two axes produce twelve domains. Each domain contains multiple principles validated by academic research. Innometrikz surveys the 36 most critical of those 90 principles. This produces a nuanced yet concrete picture of where innovation culture is strong and where it falters. To our knowledge, it is the first framework to map innovation culture in this way on a fully evidence-based foundation.
Most organizations are at the 'grower' level
The average total score across 174 respondents is 53.6%. That places the typical organisation in the 'Grower' category: engaged with innovation but not yet able to generate structural results. The distribution across the four maturity levels is telling.
More than half fall into the Grower category. That sounds encouraging, but it also means that most organisations are stuck in a middle zone: they have taken steps but cannot break through to the next level. They are plateauing.
Results per Cromax® domain
The ranking across the twelve Cromax® domains reveals clear patterns:
The gap between the strongest and weakest domain is nearly 25 percentage points. That is not marginal. And the patterns are remarkably consistent.
The strongest domain is 'Building expertise' (63.5%). Employees are curious, eager to learn and open to new things. When asked whether employees get excited about new experiences, 79% respond positively. The intrinsic motivation is there.
Now look at the weakest domain: 'Developing creative potential' (39.0%). This domain asks whether organisations actually invest in developing that creative capacity. The answer is an overwhelming no. 78% say that creative skills are never trained. 72% say they were not screened for creative thinking when hired.
That is the fundamental problem: the raw material is there but it is not being refined. Organisations expect innovation from their people without giving them the skills to deliver it.
On the horizontal axis of the Cromax model, the ideation phase stands out as by far the weakest:
Organisations generally know where they want to go (orientation scores highest) and are reasonably able to execute ideas once they have them (implementation scores second). But the actual generation of innovative solutions is the weakest link.
The evidence is concrete: 58% of respondents say there is no structured process for generating creative solutions. 57% say there is no process for capturing employee ideas. And the internal promotion of ideas falters too: employees do not know how to present their ideas persuasively to decision-makers.
This is where it gets really interesting. In the self-assessment data, the three Cromax® levels (individual, team and leadership) score remarkably close together.
That is odd. Because at organisations where we conducted the full Innometrikz® audit, surveying more than 2,000 employees in total, we see a very different pattern. There, leadership scores as the lowest level in four out of five cases:
Results self assessment per level
Results full Innometrikz® audit
In four out of five cases, leadership scores as the lowest level. The only exception is the biotech R&D organisation, where team scores marginally lower. But that exception is telling: as we show below, the perception gap between management and employees is actually largest there. Management's high self-ratings pull the leadership scores up, masking the underlying problem.
How can the self-assessment and the full audits produce such different results? The explanation is straightforward: the free self-assessment is predominantly completed by managers and senior leaders. And leaders naturally rate themselves more favourably on leadership questions than their employees would.
Scores on a scale of -6 to +6
At the biotech R&D organisation, where we surveyed all 120 employees, this pattern is particularly stark. On all twelve domains, management rates itself higher than the rest of the organisation. But the gap is largest on precisely the leadership domains:
Management rates itself nearly three points higher on leadership questions than the rest of the organisation. They believe they are doing well. Their employees see it differently.
That is not an accusation. It is a human reflex. But it is a blind spot with consequences. Because if you believe leadership is performing well when it is actually the weakest link, you will not invest where the greatest leverage lies.
The data tells three things every leader should hear.
1. Your people want to innovate but lack the means. The motivation and curiosity are there. What is missing are the skills, processes and structures to convert that motivation into innovation.
2. Ideas disappear into a black hole. There is no structured process to generate, capture and nurture ideas. The ideation phase is the weakest link in the entire innovation process.
3. Leaders overestimate how well they fulfil their role. In self-assessments, leadership scores fine. In full audits involving multiple organisational layers, it is consistently the weakest link. The difference is not subtle.
These three insights together form the core of the problem. Innovation does not fail because of a lack of good ideas or motivated people. It fails because organisations do not invest in the culture that makes innovation possible. And the leaders who should be building that culture do not see that they themselves are the biggest area for improvement.
The free self-assessment is a good starting point. It gives you a first picture and shows you where the pain points are. But the real value lies in the full Innometrikz® audit, where all layers of the organisation have their say. Only then do you see the difference between how you think things are going and how they actually are.
That difference is precisely where change begins.
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