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 driver—but to be truly effective, it must be measurable and aligned across all departments, subsidiaries, and entities within a common vision.
This is precisely the purpose of the Global Open Innovation Index: a management tool designed to assess innovation maturity across the entire organization, prioritize improvement areas, and monitor progress year after year.
The design of the Global Open Innovation Index is based on five main dimensions (core pillars), complemented by eight operational levers, together covering the full innovation cycle—from ideation to industrialization.
The 5 Core Pillars
1. Innovation Governance and Strategy
In large organizations, this refers to the structure and steering of innovation, as well as alignment with business strategies for transformation and growth. In practice, this may include:
- An Innovation Committee / COMEX Innovation: a decision-making body that validates investment priorities and roadmaps.
- Strategic alignment: integration of the entities’ or subsidiaries’ transformation plans, digital agendas, and 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 fully integrated into the company’s overall strategy and actively supported by executive leadership.
2. Financing and Corporate Venture Capital
This pillar concerns the company’s ability to allocate financial resources to foster innovation and mobilize external capital (corporate venture funds, partnerships with VCs, co-investments).
Some companies dedicate an innovation budget of at least 1–3% of annual revenue, according to international standards:
- Corporate Venture Capital (CVC): equity investment in strategic startups.
- Seed and co-development funds: support for intrapreneurial projects and strategic partnerships.
- Public funding: leveraging national programs (innovation funds, R&D grants, tax credits).
Without financing, innovation remains theoretical. Establishing internal and external funding mechanisms enables scaling of solutions and supports controlled-risk projects.
3. Digital and E-Infrastructures
This refers to all technological tools, platforms, and systems that facilitate collaboration, data sharing, and the rapid deployment of innovative solutions:
- Collaborative platforms (Miro, Slack, Teams) for ideation and co-creation.
- Innovation portals for collecting and prioritizing ideas.
- APIs and data lakes to open and reuse data.
- Cloud and DevOps environments to prototype and deploy solutions quickly.
- Cybersecurity and GDPR compliance to secure exchanges.
These infrastructures form the backbone that enables employees, partners, and startups to work together efficiently and without technical friction.
4. Technological Maturity and Average TRL
This dimension measures the average Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the solutions developed or adopted by the group.
TRL assesses the progression of a technology from concept (TRL 1) to industrial deployment (TRL 9). In practice, this can be reflected through:
- Innovation portfolio tracking: evaluation of each project’s TRL (POC, pilot, industrialization).
- Balance between exploratory projects (low TRL) and market-ready ones (high TRL).
- Acceleration programs: supporting promising projects toward TRL 7-9 to generate measurable ROI.
A high average TRL indicates the organization’s capacity to transform ideas into tangible solutions and avoid the “POC stuck in a drawer” effect.
5. Collaboration and Co-Creation Culture
This pillar captures the mindset, practices, and incentives that foster 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: integration of innovation into individual objectives.
A strong culture of collaboration turns innovation into a collective movement, encouraging ownership and adoption of solutions across the organization.
The Global Open Innovation Index: a Strategic Compass
The Global Open Innovation Index is not just a measurement tool—it is a strategic compass. It enables organizations to assess the maturity of each department, prioritize the most value-generating areas, and orchestrate a coherent innovation journey at the company or group level.
By combining the core pillars (presented here) with the operational levers (to be detailed in our next article), it becomes possible to move from a fragmented approach to a truly collective and systemic dynamic, capable of delivering concrete and sustainable innovations.
Florent Youzan