INNOVATION INDEX:LESS THAN 50 per cent of Irish companies are innovation active, with lack of know-how as big a stumbling block as lack of ideas, according to Peter Robbins, founder of the Innovation Foundation.

Robbins, who has a worked on innovation issues with multinationals,

has launched an online questionnaire to assess just how innovation-savvy an organisation is. The 30-question questionnaire is free and takes around 10 minutes. The firms most likely to benefit from the exercise are those employing between 10 and 50 people.

“All business leaders want to improve the innovation performance of their companies but, for many, innovation is still more of a buzzword rather than a competence,” he said. “By using the Irish Innovation Index tool, companies can develop a road map to improve their own innovation performance.”

The index has been developed by the Innovation Foundation in conjunction with the UCD Geary Institute and was partially funded through Enterprise Ireland’s innovation voucher scheme.

“The index synthesises leading international work in innovation auditing,” Robbins said. “It will provide companies with an objective measure of their current innovation capability and will provide best-practice pointers indicating areas for potential improvement.”

Having completed the questionnaire, companies will receive an e-mail by return that tells them how innovation-savvy they are. Based on their score, they will also be given practical suggestions on how to improve their innovation skills.

“The quality of innovation coming out of a company is related to the quality of ideas going in, added to how those ideas are converted into a product or service and then successfully brought to market,” said Robbins.

“Most SMEs can’t afford to bring in consultants to advise them on innovation. What we’re doing is giving them a flavour of the advice that will allow them to see where an expert intervention would yield the best results.”