The organization should plan, implement, and control innovation initiatives, processes, structures, and support needed to address innovation opportunities, meet requirements, and to implement the actions determined in 6.2, by:

a) establishing criteria for innovation initiatives and processes;

b) implementing control of the innovation initiatives and processes in accordance with the criteria;

c) keeping documented information to the extent necessary to have confidence that the innovation initiatives and processes have been carried out as planned.

The organization should control planned changes and review the consequences of unintended changes, taking action to prevent or mitigate any adverse effects, as necessary.

The organization should ensure that outsourced and collaborative innovation initiatives and processes are controlled.

Operational planning can require a different approach to control, especially regarding creative and experimentation activities, incorporating a higher degree of freedom and flexibility to manage uncertainty. This approach can be different from other established management control practices.

An innovation initiative is a set of coordinated activities, formal or informal, and can be an innovation project, an innovation program, or any other kind of approach. An initiative can be proposed by anyone in the organization and is characterized by having a starting and an ending point. The organization can establish one or more processes to manage these initiatives.

8.2.1 The organization should manage each innovation initiative, considering to:

a) establish, and continuously review, the scope of the initiative, including the objectives, constraints, expected results, and deliverables;

b) determine indicators and how to apply them in order to evaluate and improve the initiative;

c) establish the management and decision-making structures, e.g. steering or reference groups;

d) ensure appropriate leadership and the necessary structures and support, including resources;

e) secure and retain the people with the right competencies and experiences, and build the team;

f) establish the necessary roles, responsibilities, and authorities, including people for managing and coaching;

g) identify and establish the necessary internal and external collaboration;

h) establish and implement the appropriate innovation processes;

i) ensure the protection of intellectual property and other critical assets;

j) consider internal and external requirements and the risk of not complying with legal and regulatory requirements, including social responsibility issues;

k) continuously capture lessons learned, to gain new knowledge and perspectives;

l) leverage failures as opportunities for the organization to learn.

8.2.2 The organization should determine how to implement each innovation initiative by using a single approach or a combination of different approaches, such as:

a) an internal approach in one unit or across several internal units;

b) crowdsourcing across an organization, in a permanent or temporary arrangement;

c) collaborative, in e.g. partnerships, alliances, joint ventures, public programs, ecosystems, and other clusters of organizations;

d) outsourced, fully or partly;

e) acquisition, full merger or partial investments;

f) divestiture, full or partial spin-off.

The approach can be re-considered during the processes.

The organization should configure the innovation processes to suit the innovation initiative.

The innovation processes can be flexible and adaptable, and form different configurations, depending on, e.g. the types of innovations and the circumstances of the organization. They can:

a) form a fast track of selected processes;

b) have a non-linear sequence;

c) be iterative;

d) be implemented within, or independently from, other processes in the organization;

e) be connected to other processes in the organization.

The creative and experimentation processes focus on exploration to gain knowledge and can require resilience and flexibility.

The innovation processes can interact and interrelate with other processes in the organization. e.g. research, product development, marketing, sales, partnering, mergers and acquisitions, collaboration, and intellectual property.