Standards Development

Scope

Provide guidance to startups and SMEs on managing innovation through a structured approach grounded in the ISO 56000 series, enabling them to strengthen their management capabilities and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of their innovation activities.

Purpose

Startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent the vast majority of global industry—over 95% worldwide and 99% in Europe, with more than 80% employing fewer than ten people. These organizations are key contributors to economic growth, competitiveness, and technological progress. However, they typically operate with limited financial, human, and managerial resources, which restricts their ability to adopt structured approaches to managing innovation.

Despite the growing importance of innovation for long-term sustainability, many start-ups and SMEs have low awareness of innovation management principles and limited understanding of the benefits of adopting a structured management approach. Obstacles include a lack of internal expertise, insufficient time and financial resources, and competing short-term priorities that overshadow efforts to build innovation capabilities. Additional structural and cultural gaps—such as the absence of a proper innovation culture, limited tolerance for failure, weak strategic orientation, fear of disrupting successful existing activities, and difficulty engaging in open innovation—further impede the adoption of the ISO 56000 series. T

he implementation of Innovation Management System (IMS) often exceeds the operational, cultural, and strategic capacity of these smaller entities. In addition, deficiencies in process maturity, performance measurement, and ecosystem integration hinder systematic innovation practices in small organizations resulting in innovation practices that remain largely informal and ad hoc. These organizations often find it challenging to identify an appropriate starting point for implementation and lack guidance adapted to their developmental stage. Their limited capacity to evaluate their own innovation maturity, combined with scarce managerial expertise and constrained governance structures, reinforces the need for a more accessible and context-specific standard.

Considering these challenges, there is a clear and compelling justification for developing a dedicated guidance standard on innovation management tailored to start-ups and SMEs. Such a standard would translate the principles of the ISO 56000 series into simplified, scalable, and practical guidance aligned with the realities of smaller organizations. It would enable them to gradually develop innovation management capabilities, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their innovation activities, enhance the outcomes of investments made by-and-in SME organizations, and establish a foundation for the later adoption of more comprehensive innovation management standards.

By offering a structured yet flexible approach, this guidance would support the innovation performance of start-ups and SMEs, enhance their participation in innovation ecosystems, and contribute to broader economic resilience and competitiveness.