10/21/2020

Assess Your Capacity for Business Innovation

Start by evaluating the systems and cultural elements that empower innovation

To identify and capitalize on opportunities to create value and nontraditional revenue sources, associations should start by evaluating their systems and cultural elements that empower—or impede—innovation, according to an ASAE Research Foundation study reported in Advancing Business-Venture Innovation, released last month.

The study centered on readiness assessment, validating a first-generation model originated by principal researcher Association Ventures. Applying the tool, association leaders can self-assess readiness against eight relevant business-venture-innovation capacities, or domains, and compare themselves to peers represented in the study and best-practice references.

The research defined two areas in which association leaders might seek to build capacity as “empowerment culture” and “operational agility:"

• On empowerment culture, participating association executives gave their organizations an overall mean performance score of 77 percent, considered to be “progressing,” versus the overall mean score of 66 percent. Associations valued constructive internal exchange but lacked ability to test ideas as paths to learning.
• On operational agility, participating executives gave an overall mean score of 60 percent—the lowest of all capacity scores and considered lagging—due to lack of process, metrics, and budget linkage to project.

Please select this link to read the complete article from ASAE's Center for Research.