The Center for Business Innovation (CBI) conducts business innovation audits in order to investigate and improve the business innovation capabilities of firms. By so doing CBI helps improving the processes, practices and structures of commercializing novel and valuable ideas. CBI looks to work constructively with the management of its audited companies, aiming to increase the company’s long term competitiveness and create value for all shareholders.

The audit relies on rigorous processes and goes beyond the traditional idea of only measuring innovation capabilities quantitatively. While the audit uses quantitative data as a means for triggering discussions and reflections in action, it put its main focus on the qualitative data in order to be able to improve company’s innovation capabilities.

The audit is run in close collaboration with the audited firm to establish a joint identification of problems in, and opportunities for improvement of, companies’ innovation capabilities. Hence, as main part of CBI research, the audit takes a collaborative approach and presumes a strong commitment from the company. The audit investigates the following critical questions for any company striving for competitiveness and growth:

1. What problems are there in the current innovation practices, processes and structures?
2. What are the opportunities for improvement?

Innovation audit – The process

Prior to auditing, CBI commits considerable time and resources to collect context specific information of the company and its industry. In the audit process, the firm’s current business innovation capabilities and performance are assessed by means of questionnaires, interviews and workshops.

Two sets of web-based questionnaires, creative climate and innovation capabilities, are used in order to gather quantitative data from the audited company. Based on the received input, a workshop follow that aims to identify key problem areas and suggest areas for improvement. The auditors conduct extensive interviews with business managers within the audited company, where all thoughts regarding problem areas and possible solutions are gathered, managed and presented in a highly structured way.

Deliverables

The deliverables consist of a documentation of the audit and presentations for management. An important outcome of the business innovation audits is the problem areas that disclose through the audit process. These areas can be developed into separate research projects for CBI.

Project resources

Ther CBI audit team is carefully selected for each audit. A unique complement to the audit team is business executives from CBI’s network and partner companies, which allows for valuable insights.