International standard for Innovation Management Systems (IMS).
Overview
What is ISO 56001?
ISO 56001 is the international standard for Innovation Management Systems. The standard provides requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving a management system designed to support innovation activities and outcomes across an organization.
ISO 56001 helps organizations systematically identify opportunities, generate ideas, develop innovations, manage uncertainty, and create value through innovation. Rather than focusing on individual innovation projects, the standard establishes a framework for embedding innovation into organizational strategy, culture, governance, and operations — enabling innovation to be managed with the same discipline and accountability applied to other business-critical functions.
The standard requires organizations to define their innovation ambition, establish governance arrangements, build the capabilities needed to sustain innovation activity, and measure the effectiveness of their innovation management over time. It draws on the ISO High Level Structure, making it compatible with other ISO management system standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 27001.
ISO 56001 can be applied by organizations of any size, sector, or industry seeking to improve innovation capability and innovation performance, and is intended to be scalable to the ambition, context, and operating conditions of the organization implementing it.
Key Themes
What does the standard focus on?
Innovation Strategy
The standard requires organizations to align innovation activities with organizational strategy, defining the scope of innovation, the types of innovation to be pursued, and the resources and priorities that will guide the organization’s innovation ambitions over time.
Leadership and Culture
Top management commitment and active sponsorship of innovation are fundamental requirements, including establishing an innovation vision, allocating appropriate resources, and fostering an organizational culture in which innovation is encouraged, supported, and recognized.
Opportunity Management
Organizations must establish processes for identifying, capturing, evaluating, and prioritizing innovation opportunities, drawing on internal and external sources of insight to recognize where and how value can be created through innovation across the organization and its ecosystem.
Value Creation
The standard focuses on the translation of innovation opportunities into outcomes that create value for the organization, its customers, and other stakeholders — whether through new products, services, processes, business models, or ways of working and organizing.
Innovation Portfolio Management
A systematic approach to managing innovation investments across a portfolio of initiatives, balancing risk, resource allocation, and expected returns to support both incremental improvement and more ambitious innovation activities with longer time horizons.
Knowledge and Learning
Effective management of knowledge, insights, and learnings from innovation activities — including the structured capture of both successes and failures — enables organizations to build and sustain innovation capability and apply accumulated learning to future activities.
Collaboration and Ecosystems
The standard addresses the role of internal and external collaboration in supporting innovation, including partnerships, co-development arrangements, open innovation approaches, and engagement with the broader innovation ecosystems in which the organization participates.
Continual Improvement
A permanent commitment to improving the effectiveness of the innovation management system through performance measurement, management review, and the systematic application of insights from innovation activities to strengthen system capability and organizational learning.
Applicability
Who typically implements ISO 56001?
Technology Companies
Organizations developing software, hardware, platforms, and digital products that rely on structured innovation processes to sustain competitive advantage, manage development pipelines, and consistently deliver value to customers in rapidly evolving markets.
Research and Development Organizations
Organizations with formal R&D functions, including corporate research centers, research institutes, and publicly funded research bodies, for whom systematic management of innovation activities supports both output quality and accountability to funders and stakeholders.
Manufacturing Organizations
Manufacturers pursuing product, process, or business model innovation who require a structured framework to manage innovation investments, align innovation with production strategy, and sustain improvement in operational and commercial performance over time.
Healthcare Organizations
Healthcare providers, medical technology developers, and health services organizations seeking to develop and implement innovations in care delivery, patient experience, clinical processes, and healthcare technology in a governed and auditable manner.
Financial Institutions
Banks, insurers, investment managers, and financial technology organizations managing innovation in products, services, and business models across regulated and competitive market environments where governance of innovation investments is increasingly important.
Educational Institutions
Universities, research institutions, and professional education bodies that develop and deliver innovation in teaching, research, and knowledge transfer, and that seek to strengthen and demonstrate innovation management capability to students, funders, and partners.
Government Agencies
Public sector organizations and government departments pursuing service innovation, digital transformation, and policy development where a systematic approach to innovation management improves outcomes, supports accountability, and enables responsible use of public resources.
Professional Services Firms
Consulting, legal, accounting, and advisory organizations that innovate in service delivery, knowledge products, client engagement models, and operating structures, and that benefit from a structured and demonstrable approach to managing innovation capability.
Startups and Scale-Ups
Early-stage and growth-stage organizations building innovation capability and governance from the outset, using ISO 56001 to establish process discipline, investor confidence, and a structured foundation for scaling innovation activities as the organization grows.
Any organization that has identified innovation as a strategic priority and wishes to transition from ad hoc innovation activities to a systematic, governed, and measurable innovation management framework aligned with international requirements.
Benefits
Why organizations pursue certification
Improved Innovation Governance
A structured IMS establishes clear roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities for innovation activities, embedding governance into innovation decision-making and resource allocation at leadership level and throughout the organization.
More Structured Innovation Processes
Documented processes for identifying opportunities, developing ideas, managing uncertainty, and evaluating outcomes replace informal or inconsistent innovation practices with a repeatable, auditable, and improvable framework for managing innovation activity.
Enhanced Strategic Alignment
ISO 56001 requires innovation activities to be aligned with organizational strategy and objectives, ensuring that innovation investment consistently supports the organization’s overall direction, priorities, and long-term value creation goals.
Improved Idea Management
Structured processes for capturing, evaluating, developing, and progressing ideas across the organization enable a more consistent, fair, and effective approach to managing the flow of innovation opportunities from initial concept to developed outcome.
Better Decision-Making for Innovation Investments
Portfolio management, risk evaluation, and performance measurement processes support more informed, evidence-based decisions about where to invest innovation resources and when to stop, continue, or scale innovation initiatives.
Increased Organizational Agility
A systematic innovation management framework supports the organization’s capacity to identify and respond to emerging opportunities and threats, adapt to change, and sustain competitive relevance in dynamic and uncertain environments.
Stronger Innovation Culture
Leadership commitment, recognition mechanisms, psychological safety, and knowledge sharing requirements help organizations build and sustain a culture in which innovation is embedded in everyday activities rather than treated as an exceptional or isolated event.
Enhanced Stakeholder Confidence
Independent certification provides customers, investors, partners, and other stakeholders with evidence that the organization’s innovation management activities are governed through a recognized, structured, and independently assessed framework.
Continual Improvement of Innovation Capability
Systematic performance measurement, management review, and improvement processes ensure that the IMS evolves in response to organizational learning, changing strategic priorities, and emerging innovation challenges and opportunities.
Regulatory Context
Is ISO 56001 certification required?
ISO 56001 certification is generally voluntary. Unlike standards that are aligned primarily to regulatory compliance obligations, ISO 56001 is intended to help organizations strengthen innovation capability, competitiveness, adaptability, and long-term value creation. There are currently no general regulatory requirements mandating ISO 56001 certification across any major jurisdiction.
Organizations may pursue certification to demonstrate a structured and systematic approach to innovation management, support strategic objectives, attract investment, strengthen partnerships, and improve innovation performance. In sectors and markets where innovation capability is a differentiating factor, certification may form part of supplier qualification requirements, investment due diligence processes, or partnership development criteria.
Certification can provide confidence to customers, investors, partners, and other stakeholders that innovation activities are managed through an established and repeatable framework that has been independently assessed. As ISO 56001 is a relatively recent standard, its adoption and recognition across sectors and markets continues to develop.
Certification Journey
How certification works
01
Application
The organization submits an application and scope information for certification. Exelera reviews the scope of innovation activities, organizational context, sites, and certification requirements.
02
Application Review
Exelera reviews the application, confirms the certification scope, assesses the nature of the organization’s innovation activities, identifies any specific requirements, and prepares the certification proposal and audit program.
03
Stage 1 Audit
Evaluation of innovation management system documentation, governance arrangements, innovation strategy documentation, and organizational readiness for Stage 2 conformance assessment against the requirements of ISO 56001.
04
Stage 2 Audit
On-site evaluation of the implementation and effectiveness of the IMS, including innovation processes, opportunity management, portfolio governance, knowledge management, leadership commitment, and conformity with all applicable standard requirements.
05
Certification Decision
Independent review of the audit report and findings by a Certification Decision Maker not involved in the audit, followed by a formal certification decision.
06
Certificate Issuance
Following a positive certification decision, Exelera issues the certificate and publishes the organization on the public certification register.
07
Surveillance Audit — Year 1
Scheduled surveillance visit conducted no later than 12 months after the certification decision to verify continued conformance, assess system effectiveness, and review the organization’s innovation management performance.
08
Surveillance Audit — Year 2
Continued verification of IMS implementation, opportunity and portfolio management processes, knowledge management practices, and the application of corrective actions from prior audits.
09
Recertification Audit
Comprehensive reassessment of the full innovation management system scope conducted prior to renewal of the certification cycle at the end of year three.
10
Certification Renewal
Following a successful recertification audit and positive certification decision, a new three-year certification cycle commences.
FAQ
Common questions
An Innovation Management System (IMS) is a structured set of processes, governance arrangements, policies, and practices that enable an organization to systematically manage its innovation activities. An IMS provides a framework for identifying and evaluating opportunities, generating and developing ideas, managing innovation portfolios, allocating resources, managing uncertainty, and creating value through innovation in a repeatable and improvable way. ISO 56001 specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving an IMS — providing the management system architecture within which an organization’s innovation activities are governed and directed.
ISO 56001 can be implemented by any organization of any size, sector, or industry that wishes to establish, improve, or demonstrate the effectiveness of its innovation management system. The standard is not restricted to technology-intensive organizations or large enterprises. It is applicable to any organization for which innovation — whether in products, services, processes, business models, or ways of working — is a strategic priority and for which a structured, governed approach to managing innovation activities is desirable.
No. ISO 56001 is applicable to organizations across all sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, professional services, education, government, and the public sector. Innovation can occur in any type of organization and in many forms — including process innovation, service innovation, business model innovation, and organizational innovation — and ISO 56001 is explicitly designed to accommodate this breadth of application. The standard’s requirements are framed in a way that is neutral with respect to industry, sector, and the type of innovation being managed.
Yes. ISO 56001 is designed to be scalable and can be applied to organizations of any size, including startups and early-stage companies. For startups, the standard provides a framework for building innovation governance and process discipline from the outset, and certification may support investor confidence and partnership development. Exelera adapts the audit program to reflect the size and operating context of the organization being assessed, so that the approach is proportionate to the organization’s scale and maturity.
Research and development activities focus on creating new knowledge, developing new technologies, or testing new ideas through structured experimental programs. ISO 56001 addresses the broader management system framework within which innovation activities — including but not limited to R&D — are governed, resourced, and directed. An organization may conduct R&D as one component of its innovation activity; ISO 56001 addresses how the organization identifies opportunities, manages its innovation portfolio, builds and applies knowledge, makes decisions about innovation investments, and sustains innovation capability across the whole of the business rather than within a single function or program.
The time required depends on the size of the organization, the complexity of its innovation activities, and the maturity of its existing innovation management practices and documentation. For an organization that has established documented innovation processes and governance arrangements, the process from initial application to certificate issuance typically takes between three and six months. Larger organizations or those requiring more significant development of documented systems, governance structures, or performance measurement frameworks may require a longer program.
Following initial certification, surveillance audits are conducted annually — with the first surveillance no later than 12 months after the certification decision and the second no later than 24 months. A full recertification audit is required at the end of the three-year certification cycle before the certificate can be renewed.
ISO 56001 certificates are valid for three years from the date of the certification decision, subject to satisfactory completion of annual surveillance audits. Certification lapses if surveillance audits are not completed within the required timeframe, or if the certificate is suspended or withdrawn due to nonconformity or other grounds.
Certification transfers are possible in most cases. Exelera will review the existing certification, audit history, and current conformance status as part of the transfer assessment. Transfer audits are typically shorter than initial certification audits, reflecting the documented history of conformance. Contact Exelera for specific guidance on the transfer process and the information required to initiate a transfer review.
Applications can be submitted through the Exelera website or by contacting the certification team directly. The application process involves providing information about the organization’s scope of innovation activities, sites, employee headcount, and existing innovation management documentation. Exelera will review the application and prepare a certification proposal for consideration.
Related Standards
Standards commonly implemented alongside ISO 56001
