The European Standard for Innovation Management (UNE-CEN/TS 16555-1:2013) has been recently published

On June, 2013, was approved the UNE-CEN/TS 16555-1:2013, the European Standard for Innovation Management, and finally on July, the 4th was finally published.

 

As Oana-Maria Pop (Senior Editor of IM) stated at the beginning of this year: “As evidence suggests, innovation – both as a field of study and as a practical discipline – has gained considerable traction over the past 15 years. As organizations become broader and more complex, the need for a systematic approach to new product, service or business development techniques strengthens accordingly. And this is merely the tip of the iceberg – there are multiple insights on why communities can benefit from an organized approach to innovation – a process at the heart of our everyday (business) lives. As of today, this approach is becoming a reality and work slowly progresses towards the creation of a unified Innovation Management Standard. Why the delay? Plainly because relating innovation to standardization is something most practitioners still find counter-intuitive”.

 

But that work successfully concluded this last June. In that successful result some stakeholders and supranational bodies such as AENOR in Spain and SIS in Sweden were crucial, integrated and collaborating inside the CEN/TC 389 Innovation Management technical committee, that was created (by CEN) in November 2008 to support a culture of innovation in Europe and accelerate the access of innovation to both domestic and global markets. Note: similar to the worldwide ISO, at the European level, Brussels-based CEN (the European Committee for Standardization) is the solely recognized organization for the planning drafting and adoption of European Standards in all major areas of business except electro-technology and telecommunications.

 

Concretely, the Spanish standard UNE 166002 (Gestión de la I+D+i) was published by AENOR in 2006 and bring a consistent set of guidelines on which the new European Standard has been built. Now AENOR is working in adapting (light changes) its UNE 166002 Standard to fully meet the UNE-CEN/TS 16555-1:2013. TISSAT is certified in UNE 166002 since 2010.

 

This Technical Specification provides guidance on establishing and maintaining an innovation management system (IMS). It is applicable to all public and private organisations regardless of sector, type or size. This document provides guidance on:

-          understanding the context of the organisation;
-          establishing the leadership and commitment of top management;
-          planning for innovation success;
-          identifying and fostering innovation enablers/driving factors;
-          developing the innovation management process;
-          evaluating and improving the performance of the innovation management system;
-          understanding and using innovation management techniques.

By using this document, organisations can increase their awareness of the value of an IMS, establish such a system, expand their capacity for innovation, and ultimately generate more value for the organisation and its interested parties. Since the innovation management system outlined in this document follows the PDCA structure (plan-do-check-act), so it can be integrated within other standardised business management systems existing in the organisations, e.g. EN ISO 9001, EN ISO 14001, etc. That’s the case of TISSAT, where these 3 Standards are fully integrated.

 

Finally, it should be noticed that the UNE-CEN/TS 16555-1:2013 is part of a family of Standards (on which the TC 389 is currently working on) as shown in the next table:

 

CEN/TS 16555   Standards Family
CEN/TS	Title	Status	Estimated Date
16555-1	Innovation   Management – Part 1: Innovation Management System	Published	2013-07
16555-2	Innovation   Management – Part 2: Strategic Intelligence Management.	Draft	2014-12
16555-3	Innovation   Management – Part 3: Innovation Thinking	Draft	2014-12
16555-4	Innovation   Management – Part 4: Intellectual Property Management	Draft	2014-12
16555-5	Innovation   Management – Part 5: Collaboration Management	Draft	2014-12
16555-6	Innovation   Management – Part 6: Creativity Management	Draft	2014-12
16555-7	Innovation   Management – Part 7: Innovation Management Assessment	Draft	2014-02