This document provides guidance on managing opportunities and ideas by:

—     explaining the reasons for and the value of managing ideas effectively;

—     describing how to prepare for front end innovation activities;

—     addressing people and organization issues, including innovation leadership, culture and strategy;

—     detailing innovation activities and their interrelationships;

—     outlining activity and process evaluation considerations that are important for innovation success.

A sub-set of processes are addressed as described in ISO 56002, i.e. identifying opportunities, creating concepts, and validating them. The activities within these processes, when managed together, bring forward viable innovation concepts for development. Developing these innovation concepts into solutions and deploying these solutions is addressed by ISO 56002 and is outside the scope of this guidance document.

This document provides guidance for any innovation type along the continuum from incremental to radical innovation, as defined in ISO 56000.

This guidance is intended for:

—     any user involved in innovation, whether for an organization or individual;

—     any organization type or scale;

—     any understanding of value creation and realization, whether for profit, social impact, changes in strategic direction, or any other purpose.

This document can help organizations to systematically manage their opportunities and ideas to realize greater value from front end innovation activities to arrive at go/no–go decisions for development. There is no one method or set of tools for use in all situations. Choice is impacted by a range of related considerations to be addressed in this document.