In a world where innovation is no longer a luxury but a necessity,
service companies and large corporations must structure their efforts to remain competitive. Open Innovation has become an essential lever, but it is still necessary to measure its impact and align all departments, subsidiaries, and entities around a common vision.
This is precisely the purpose of the Global Open Innovation Index: a management tool designed to evaluate innovation maturity across the entire organization, prioritize areas for improvement, and track results year after year.
The design of the Global Open Innovation Index is based on five main dimensions (core pillars) complemented by eight operational levers, allowing full coverage of the innovation cycle—from ideation to industrialization.
The 5 Core Pillars
1. Innovation Governance and Strategy
In a large group, this refers to the innovation governance structure and its alignment with business strategies for transformation and growth. In practice, this can take the form of:
- An Innovation Committee / Innovation COMEX: a decision-making body that validates investment priorities and roadmaps.
- Strategic alignment: integration of the entities’ or subsidiaries’ roadmaps (transformation plans, digital agendas, operational innovation strategies).
- Internal policy: adoption of an innovation charter, an ethical framework, and measurable objectives (economic and social impact KPIs).
Clear governance ensures that innovation is not marginal but integrated into the company’s global strategy and supported by top management.
2. Financing and Venture Capital
This reflects the company’s ability to allocate financial resources to encourage innovation and mobilize external capital (corporate venture funds, partnerships with VCs, co-investments).
Some companies dedicate a specific innovation budget (≥ 1–3% of annual revenue, according to international standards).
- Corporate Venture Capital (CVC): equity participation in strategic startups.
- Seed and co-development funds: support for intrapreneurial projects or strategic partnerships.
- Public funding: leveraging national mechanisms (innovation funds, R&D grants, tax credits).
Without financing, innovation remains theoretical. Establishing internal and external financing mechanisms allows scaling of solutions and support for high-potential projects under controlled risk.
3. Digital and e-Infrastructures
This refers to all technological tools, platforms, and systems that enable collaboration, data sharing, and rapid deployment of innovative solutions:
- Collaborative platforms (Miro, Slack, Teams) for ideation and co-creation.
- Innovation portals to collect and prioritize ideas.
- APIs and data lakes for data openness and reuse.
- Cloud and DevOps environments to prototype and deploy solutions quickly.
- Cybersecurity and GDPR compliance to ensure secure exchanges.
These infrastructures are the backbone that allows employees, partners, and startups to work together efficiently, without technical friction.
4. Technological Maturity and Average TRL
This refers to the average Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of solutions developed or adopted by the group.
The TRL scale measures a technology’s progress from idea (TRL 1) to industrial deployment (TRL 9).
In practice, this translates into:
- Innovation portfolio monitoring: evaluating the TRL of each project (POC, pilot, industrialization).
- Balance between exploratory projects (low TRL) and market-ready projects (high TRL).
- Acceleration programs: supporting promising projects up to TRL 7–9 to generate measurable ROI.
A high average TRL reflects the group’s ability to turn ideas into tangible solutions and avoid the “POC that dies in a drawer” effect.
5. Culture of Collaboration and Co-Creation
This refers to the mindset, practices, and incentives that promote active participation of employees, partners, clients, and startups in innovation:
- Internal innovation communities: ambassadors, intrapreneurs, ideation clubs.
- Hackathons and co-creation workshops with partners and end-users.
- HR indicators: percentage of employees trained in design thinking, participation rate in innovation challenges.
- Recognition and rewards: integrating innovation into individual objectives.
A strong culture of collaboration turns innovation into a collective movement, fostering ownership and adoption of solutions across the organization.
The Global Open Innovation Index
The Global Open Innovation Index is not just a measurement tool—it is a strategic compass.
It enables the evaluation of each department’s maturity, prioritization of the most value-generating areas, and orchestration of a coherent innovation approach across the Group or company.
By combining the core pillars (presented here) with the operational levers (to be introduced in the next article), organizations can move from a fragmented approach to a truly collective dynamic, capable of delivering concrete and sustainable solutions.
Florent Youzan