How might one get started? A Knowledge Innovation litmus test is provided below as a sample of questions to be answered for an organization to assess its capacity for innovation. There are actually over seventy questions in the full assessment available in text or software application form (Amidon 1997a, pp. 62-63). The questions below provide a sample of ten carefully researched dimensions of innovation and may be answered individually or in a group. Using this as a dialog tool, participants may get a better understanding of the complementary competencies that can be brought to bear.

Yes No

1. Has one person been charged with the overall responsibility to manage the corporatewide innovation process?

2. Are there performance measures both tangible and intangible to assess the quality of the organization's innovation practices?

3. Do the training/educational programs have provisions to incubate and spin out new products and businesses?

4. Does the local, regional, or international presence operate as a distributed network of expertise which learns from as well as distributes to customers?

5. Is there a formal intelligence-gathering strategy to monitor the positioning of both current and potential competitors?

6. Does the rate of production of new products and services exceed the industry norms and create new markets in which to excel?

7. Has a strategic alliance manager been designated to create and manage the network of partnerships and joint ventures to leverage the firm?

8. Does your marketing image portray an organization with the capacity to create and move ideas into the marketplace to make the firm's customers successful?

9. Have...