Growing Your Innovation Adoption Maturity

An Organization at the “Aware” Maturity Level

Here’s what their snapshot reveals:

At the leadership level, senior leaders greenlight some innovation adoption projects — but they are not consistently driving them (6. Leadership Engagement: Approving – Level 2). There is a basic strategic framing in place, but it lacks focus, funding, or dedicated roles (1. Innovation Strategy: Aspirational – Level 2).

On the other hand, the organization is not actively looking for new ideas or scanning for innovation (2. Innovation Scanning: Blind–0).

At the foundation, the situation is shaky, too: The organization notices problems as they arise (3. Problem Definition: Noticed–1), but lacks a method for analyzing root causes. Prioritization of problems or projects is essentially random (4. Prioritization: Random–0) — driven by gut feeling or who’s asking loudest.

While leadership is somewhat engaged, clinicians are often involved too late and rarely shape decisions (5. Clinician Involvement: Informed-1).

There are some early signs of structure (8. Process Discipline: Emerging–2), but cultural hesitation slows progress (7. Culture & Mindset: Cautious– 1). The organization resists experimentation and lacks support for standardization.

Next, deployed innovation tends to remain on the periphery: New ideas live in pilots or special projects, but don’t change core workflows (9. Integration with Operations: Adjacent–1) as Change Management (10.) is minimal (Level 1).

Performance Management (11.) also merely happens anecdotally (Level 1), which means that even when ideas succeed, lessons aren’t formalized or scaled. Unsurprisingly, this means that sustainability depends on a few passionate individuals, but is not built into systems (12. Sustainability: Person-Dependent-1).

Taken together, the organization’s Innovation Adoption Maturity lands at Level 1 – Aware, defined in our first article as:

“The organization recognizes the value of innovation and may include it in vision statements or leadership talking points. But there is no consistent support structure to act on those intentions. It is good intention with no backing.”

While this may not reflect how leadership wants to see itself, it provides a critical starting point for progress.

What Comes Next: Don’t Jump to Running

At this stage, leadership may be tempted to set bold aspirations:

• “Let’s aim for Level 5 – Strategic!”

• “Let’s build a fully funded innovation center!”

• “Let’s get clinicians to lead every project!”

But that’s not how maturity growth works.

In our experience, “Level 4 – Aligned” — is the true tipping point. At that level

“Innovation efforts are clearly tied to organizational priorities. Processes exist for identifying and managing initiatives. There is coordination across departments, and innovation is integrated into planning and budgeting cycles.”

However, trying to leapfrog several maturity levels — or elevate just one hallmark — often backfires. All 12 hallmarks are highly interdependent. Advancing one far ahead of the others creates friction instead of momentum.

The real wisdom of the maturity model is this: Progress happens one level at a time.

It’s not about perfecting innovation. It’s about building readiness — systematically.

Creating Maturity Alignment

Given this organization’s current profile (mostly at Level 1, with a few hallmarks at Level 2), the best next move is to bring all hallmarks to “Level 2 – Reactive”. From there, they can leapfrog Level 3 and grow expediently into “Level 4 – Aligned”.

In the next article, we’ll lay out the specific, achievable steps, e.g., to go from “blind to exploratory” when it comes to Innovation Scanning (2.) or from “anecdotal to basic” for Performance Management (11.).

Are you ready to assess your organization’s Innovation Adoption Maturity? For the remainder of 2025 we are giving away one free Innovation Maturity Assessment and consultation per quarter. First come, first served!