An instrument, six dimensions, a registry of named gaps, and an honest confidence rung.
Nothing here is generated by a model. It is a structured instrument that draws on published research, scored deterministically, and read against patterns we have written down in advance so you can check our work.
Seven seats, two ways in
You answer the version sized to your seat, not a single survey stretched over five different jobs. Executives are asked for evidence — counts, budgets, dates, named projects. Everyone else is asked about the climate they actually experience. Both feed the same six dimensions, which is what makes them comparable. What differs is who can open which seat.
Team leaders · Individual contributors · HR and People
All answer the Individual Innovation Scan — 47 questions, 15–20 min. The first ten to twelve are free, no login. In a sponsored run these seats answer the longer Employee Scan instead, because the organizational reading needs items the self-serve scan leaves out.
Top authority and executives · Management · Partners · Customers
Opened by the sponsoring organization on an invite link — executives and management inside it, partners and customers across the boundary. There is no way to start one for yourself, on purpose: these readings only mean something inside a run that has the other seats in it.
“I don't know” is a first-class answer in every instrument. It is a real reading of the climate, not a skipped question, and it is scored as one.
Where the six come from
Items score into Aspiration, Permission, Capability, Connection, Courage and Urgency — each with its own margin.
Draws on Three Horizons thinking — stated intent held against resourced intent.
Draws on Göran Ekvall's studies of creative climate — the working conditions under which ideas survive.
Draws on the Innovator's DNA research — whether the discovery skills are actually in the room.
Draws on absorptive-capacity research — how new knowledge gets in, and whether it travels.
Draws on Amy Edmondson's psychological-safety research — whether candour is safe here.
Read from cycle evidence — dates and movement, not felt busyness.
The sources, and how they shaped the items
- AspirationBaghai, Coley & White, The Alchemy of Growth (1999) — the Three Horizons model.
- PermissionEkvall, “Organizational climate for creativity and innovation”, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 5(1), 1996.
- CapabilityDyer, Gregersen & Christensen, The Innovator's DNA (2011).
- ConnectionCohen & Levinthal, “Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation”, Administrative Science Quarterly 35(1), 1990; Tushman on boundary-spanning roles, ASQ 22(4), 1977.
- CourageEdmondson, “Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams”, Administrative Science Quarterly 44(2), 1999.
- UrgencyNo citation to carry — read from cycle evidence: dates and movement.
The items are authored by us, not lifted from these instruments. The literature shaped what we ask about; the wording, scoring and thresholds are our own — which is why this page says draws on, not validated by.
The gap between vantage points is the finding
Scores run against a registry of fifteen named misalignments. A pattern fires or it doesn't.
Each column is a distribution, never a person. Any slice with fewer than five respondents is suppressed before it reaches this view, so no small team can be singled out.
We tell you which rung the reading is on
Most diagnostics present every output with the same confident voice. This one doesn't. The rung is printed on every pattern, on the results page and in the organizational dashboard.
One vantage point. Worth thinking about, not worth acting on alone.
Two seats disagree by more than the margin. Now there is something to explain.
The gap holds across three independent vantage points. This is what a sponsored engagement buys.
Start on the first rung. The opening questions are free.
Your own view in one sitting. Your answers never silently become organizational data — an org assessment is a separate, sponsored, consented engagement.