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ISO 56001 Innovation Management innovation you can actually account for
Most companies fund innovation without being able to show how ideas are chosen, killed or turned into revenue. ISO 56001 is the first certifiable standard in the innovation management family, and it certifies that opportunity capture, portfolio decisions, intellectual property handling and measurement of outcomes run as a managed system rather than on individual enthusiasm.
You need ISO 56001 if…
- !A grant or innovation incentive claim requires evidence of a managed innovation process, not a list of projects.
- !Investors in diligence asked how the product roadmap is decided and nobody could describe the mechanism.
- !Ideas from engineering and customer-facing teams disappear because there is no route for them to be assessed.
- !Two divisions have been funding near-identical development work for a year without either knowing.
- !Intellectual property created in a joint development agreement was never captured, and ownership is now contested.
- !A public sector or enterprise tender scores innovation capability and asks for third-party evidence of it.
A management system standard for innovation. It sets requirements for innovation strategy, portfolio and initiative management, allocation of people, time, money and intellectual property, and measurement of what innovation actually produced.
A certified management system, and the first certifiable standard in the ISO 56000 family. An accredited certification body audits and issues the certificate; earlier documents are guidance only.
Three-year certificate with annual surveillance audits that follow real initiatives through the gates rather than reviewing procedures alone.
Technology and product companies, R&D-intensive manufacturers, engineering firms, and organisations claiming innovation incentives or answering investor diligence.
Where this certification is demanded
ISO 56001 is applicable across 1 of the 25 industries SIS covers. The pages below set out the specific reason it comes up in each one.
What ISO 56001 Actually Requires
The backbone an implementer has to build, in the order it usually gets built.
Establish where innovation has to happen and why: markets, technologies, competitor moves, regulatory shifts, and the ambition the organisation is actually prepared to fund.
Top management sets an innovation vision, strategy and policy, and accepts that some funded work will fail without that failure being punished.
Innovation objectives with measures, a portfolio balanced across incremental and exploratory work, and criteria that decide which initiatives proceed, pivot or stop.
Ring-fenced budget and protected time, competence and collaboration arrangements, strategic intelligence gathering, and a working process for capturing and protecting intellectual property.
A defined route from opportunity and idea through concept creation, validation, development and deployment, with decision points, evidence at each gate, and named owners.
Indicators covering both the process and its results, internal audit, management review, and documented changes made because a metric or a failed initiative said so.
How ISO 56001 Certification Works
No black box. A defined, time-bound route from first call to certificate in hand.
Application & Proposal
We establish which business units, R&D sites and innovation activities are in scope, whether external collaborations and joint ventures fall inside the boundary, and how many audit days that needs.
1–2 daysGap Review & Readiness
The decision criteria are the problem. They live in a director’s judgement, and when the auditor asks why one initiative was funded over another, nobody can produce the written rule.
1–2 weeksStage 1 + Stage 2 Audit
Stage 1 examines the innovation strategy, portfolio and documented process. Stage 2 follows live initiatives through their gates, tests kill decisions, budget protection, IP records and the metrics reported upward.
Scheduled around operationsCertificate Issued
The certificate names the scope. Surveillance revisits the portfolio a year on and asks what moved; an initiative still sitting at the gate it reached last year starts that conversation.
Valid 3 yearsIndustries That Need ISO 56001
Commonly taken alongside
Not Sure Which Certification You Need?
Three questions. The selector reads the same industry-to-standard mapping this whole site is built on, then shortlists what applies to you.
Which sector best describes your organisation?
Which projects did you stop, and who decided?
Scope drives the fee here more than size does: a group that certifies two development units pays for two, not for every office on the letterhead.
Get My Free Quote →What ISO 56001 Changes for Your Business
Certification is not a certificate on the wall. It is a working system that pays for itself.
Portfolio decisions get made
Explicit criteria and gates mean weak initiatives stop early instead of drifting for two years. The budget and the engineers go back to work that can still win.
Intellectual property captured
Invention disclosure, ownership terms in collaboration agreements and records of what was created when protect value that otherwise leaks out with a departing engineer.
Cleaner investor diligence
Questions about how the roadmap is decided and how R&D money is controlled get answered with a certified system and a documented portfolio.
Support for incentive claims
Grant bodies and tax incentive reviewers ask for evidence that projects were planned, monitored and evaluated. The system produces that record as a by-product.
Less duplicated development
A visible portfolio exposes two teams building the same thing. That discovery is expensive, and without a portfolio it is normally made by accident after the money is spent.
Innovation you can report
Board reporting moves from anecdotes about promising projects to measures such as share of revenue from recent launches and time from concept to deployment.
Knowledge Base - Downloads
Practical documents prepared by our auditors. Fill the short form once and every download on the page unlocks.
Building an innovation portfolio and gate criteria
How to set decision criteria that stop initiatives early, and what evidence each gate should demand before funding continues.
Innovation initiative record and gate log
A record structure covering the opportunity, the concept, validation evidence, decisions taken at each gate and the reason an initiative was stopped.
Intellectual property capture in collaborations
Background and foreground IP, disclosure timing and confidentiality points to settle before a joint development agreement is signed.
Measuring innovation without vanity metrics
Indicators that tell a board something useful, and why idea counts and patent totals mislead more often than they inform.
Frequently Asked Questions
Straight answers to what buyers ask before they commit to ISO 56001.
How is ISO 56001 different from ISO 56002?
Does this standardise creativity out of the business?
Are we too small for an innovation management system?
What does the auditor look at in Stage 2?
Will certification help with grant applications or R&D tax claims?
Can we certify only our R&D division?
Start the ISO 56001 certification process
ISO 56001 is auditable in a way the earlier guidance documents in the family were not, so what you hold at the end is a certificate rather than a self-declaration.
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