GISAT2.0
GISAT2.0 helps individuals, teams, and organizations assess their innovation skills capacities against their innovation skills needs. In particular, it identifies:
- The extent to which an individual demonstrates a desired innovation skill.
- The importance of a skill to a particular job or job function.
- The skills gaps (surpluses or deficits) that exist between individuals and job functions.
Individuals, teams, and managers use GISAT2.0 to better understand their innovation skills strengths and weaknesses and act accordingly to maximize performance. GISAT2.0 provides a framework for reflection, discussion and action by encouraging individuals, teams, and organizations to:
- Consider the implications of their innovation skills gaps.
- Determine the most effective ways to overcome these skills gaps (e.g., team-building, training, mentoring, realignment of job tasks, hiring practices).
Innovation SkillsThe skills in GISAT2.0 come from the Conference Board’s Innovation Skills Profile (ISP2.0)—available at: www.conferenceboard.ca/cbi/innovationskills.aspx.The ISP2.0 is based on the input of hundreds of business leaders, entrepreneurs, educators, innovation consultants, innovation-award-winning companies; and an extensive literature review. It identifies four categories of skills, attitudes, and behaviours that contribute to an organization's capacity to innovate:
The GISAT2.0 asks individuals to assess the degree to which they demonstrate a number of specific innovation skills within each category, as well as the importance of these skills to their jobs/job functions. |
How to Use GISAT2.0
GISAT2.0 is easy to use, takes approximately 20-30 minutes to complete, and involves 4 steps.Step 1: Assessing Your Own Innovation Skills
- First, you will be asked to assess the degree to which you demonstrate a particular innovation skill, attitude, or behaviour (using a 1 to 5 scale) in each of the four innovation skills categories (creativity/problem-solving; risk-assessment/risk-taking; relationship-building/communication; and implementation). This step takes between 15 and 20 minutes to complete.
- Once completed, your innovation skills scores will be generated for each category. A brief analysis and description of what your scores mean will also be produced.
Step 2: Assessing the Importance of Innovation Skills to Your Job
- You will then be asked to assess the importance of each innovation skill, attitude, or behaviour to your job (using a 1 to 5 scale) found within the four innovation skills categories. This step also takes 15 to 20 minutes to complete (however, given that you will be familiar with the skills, this step may take less time to complete).
- Once completed, a score that assess the importance of different innovation skills categories to your job will be generated. A brief analysis and description of what your job-assessment scores mean will also be produced.
Step 3: Innovation Skills Gap Analysis
- GISAT2.0 will generate a detailed report (PDF) which you can download and save/print for your own records and use. This report takes approximately 1 minute to download.
- The GISAT2.0 report will provide you with an in-depth analysis and commentary of your scores to help you better understand your innovation skills surpluses and deficits; and what it means to you, to your job, to teams/departments, and to your organization. Take as much time as you need to read the report and to reflect on your responses and the analysis.
Step 4: Plan of Action for Improved Innovation Performance
Throughout the GISAT2.0 report you will see a number prompts and worksheets to help you (whether on your own, as part of a group, in consultation with a manager/leader, or as part of a performance review process):- Reflect on your innovation skills scores.
- Identify opportunities and activities to make better use of your underutilized innovation skills strengths.
- Improve upon and develop your innovation skills weakness—e.g., through training, mentoring, job-shadowing, etc.
- Measure success.