Readiness Check
How ready is your organisation to run Business Design? Thirty questions – five for each phase of the end-to-end innovation process and five on work culture – show you where the process already works and where it breaks. Score honestly. A flattering result helps nobody.
Bernhard Doll
Business Design Maverick
Content
1. Purpose
Business Design is more than a method for single projects. It is an innovation management and growth system that covers the complete journey from vision to market (see Process). Most organisations are strong in some phases and weak in others. One company has an excellent sprint team but no Picture of the Future to decide against. Another has an inspiring vision but nobody who is allowed to explore. The readiness check shows you exactly where you stand.
Use it at the start of a Business Design initiative to decide where to begin. Repeat it every 6 to 12 months to see whether the system is actually maturing.
2. How to Score
Answer every question on a scale from 1 to 4. Score what happens in practice, not what is written in a policy document. If you have to think hard to find an example, the answer is probably 2.
Score | Level | What it means |
1 | Not present | The practice does not exist, or it exists only on paper. |
2 | Ad hoc | It happens occasionally and depends on individual people. |
3 | Established | It works reliably in single projects or units. |
4 | Systematic | It is repeatable across the organisation, and nobody questions it any more. |
Fill in the check with a small group – ideally a C-Level Manager, an Innovation Manager and a Team Coach who has run projects in your organisation. Score individually first, then compare. The differences between the scores often tell you more than the scores themselves.
3. Phase I: Picture of the Future & Strategy
Phase I sets the strategic direction for all innovation work. Without it, nobody can say whether an idea is good or bad.
# | Question | Score (1–4) |
1.1 | Does a Picture of the Future exist that covers the purpose of your organisation, the future life of your customers and of your organisation, the connections between them and the future context? "No. 1 in our industry, +3% margin" is a goal, not a vision. | |
1.2 | Is it concrete enough that two managers independently judge the same idea the same way – as fitting the strategy or not? | |
1.3 | Is there a Measurement of Success & Progress for innovation – long-term objectives and short-term KPIs, separate from those of the core business? | |
1.4 | Do C-Level Managers build the picture of the future themselves, and is it revised at a fixed rhythm with insights from Phase IV? | |
1.5 | Does it visibly shape decisions today – hiring, the prioritisation of ideas and how Project Sponsors steer projects? | |
Total Phase I | / 20 |
4. Phase II: Playgrounds & Exploration
Phase II turns money into knowledge. Organisations that skip it develop ideas from what they already know.
# | Question | Score (1–4) |
2.1 | Are playgrounds derived from the Picture of the Future – each one combining elements of the future Business Model with a current opportunity or challenge – rather than taken from existing business unit agendas (see Framing Playgrounds)? | |
2.2 | Is there a deliberate decision for every playground: low uncertainty goes straight to ideation, high uncertainty gets its own exploration (see Exploring Playgrounds)? | |
2.3 | Do explorations get a dedicated Project Team of curious people with real time – around six weeks per playground – instead of being done on the side? | |
2.4 | Is exploration funded without asking for a business case up front? At this stage, business cases kill ideas and the motivation of the people behind them. | |
2.5 | Can you name a recent research insight that surprised you and changed a direction? | |
Total Phase II | / 20 |
5. Phase III: Portfolio & Evaluation
Phase III is the linchpin of the innovation system. Here, management looks at ideas through the lens of a risk investor.
# | Question | Score (1–4) |
3.1 | Are new ideas built on research insights and documented in a standard format such as the Idea Charter? | |
3.2 | Is there one Portfolio for all ideas – new ones and those already in progress – with explicit evaluation criteria: strategic relevance, entrepreneurial opportunity and uncertainty? | |
3.3 | Does management revise the portfolio in a compact meeting every 3 to 6 months (see Step 3: Evaluate)? | |
3.4 | Does the evaluation route every idea to its next step – Step 2: Deep Dive, validation in Phase IV, direct implementation in Phase V, deprioritisation or kill – rather than to a yes or no on budget? | |
3.5 | Does management hold back from detailed financial plans at this stage, and treat killed ideas as normal risk management rather than failure? | |
Total Phase III | / 20 |
6. Phase IV: Validation & Refinement
Phase IV is the most operational and the most challenging phase. It asks an organisation to work against many of its habits at once.
# | Question | Score (1–4) |
4.1 | Does every project start with a Project Charter "Sprint" and a Project Sponsor who can actually make decisions? | |
4.2 | Are interdisciplinary teams freed up for around ten weeks per iteration and supported by a Team Coach? | |
4.3 | Is it culturally accepted to ask customers questions early and to test prototypes that are not finished? | |
4.4 | Are success-critical assumptions turned into hypotheses with measurable thresholds, tested in experiments and reported with full transparency (see Hypotheses & Experiments)? | |
4.5 | Do sponsors make clear STOP, ITERATE or GO decisions on the basis of facts – and do projects actually get stopped (see Step 5: Decide)? | |
Total Phase IV | / 20 |
7. Phase V: Execution & Go-to-Market
In Phase V, quality, cost and scalability take over from speed and learning. Responsibilities shift – and so does the potential for friction.
# | Question | Score (1–4) |
5.1 | Is the route to market chosen deliberately for every idea: handover to a business unit, a new business unit, a start-up or a partnership? | |
5.2 | Is there a New Business Blueprint that brings together the results of Phase I to Phase IV with a go-to-market plan – and do C-Level Managers formally decide on it? | |
5.3 | Are ownership, budget and people for the handover from Phase IV to Phase V settled before the friction starts? | |
5.4 | Can the organisation take on a new business outside its usual planning cycles – with sales processes, incentive systems, IT systems and operations adapted to it? | |
5.5 | After launch, is the new business measured against the objectives from Phase I, and are the necessary changes tackled with Business Design again? | |
Total Phase V | / 20 |
8. Work Culture
A process only works if people are rewarded for following it. In Business Design, culture is expected behaviour – what people learn from what gets rewarded and what gets punished (see Work Culture). Score what you see in meetings, promotions and budget decisions, not what the values poster says.
# | Question | Score (1–4) |
6.1 | Rewards: Look at last year. Did promotions, budgets and recognition go to people who tested ideas early, questioned the brief and stopped weak projects – or to people who delivered on time and never drew attention? | |
6.2 | Mistakes: When a project is stopped, are the people behind it trusted with the next important project – or does it hurt their career? Do teams talk openly about falsified hypotheses, without hiding them or celebrating them? | |
6.3 | Facts over opinions: In portfolio and steering meetings, do customer quotes and experiment results come first – or does the highest-paid opinion decide (see Facts Over Opinions)? | |
6.4 | Momentum over perfectionism: Do teams show unfinished prototypes to customers and management within weeks – or do they work in secret until the solution feels "perfect" (see Demo or Die)? | |
6.5 | Decide! Does every innovation meeting end with a decision or with the date one will be taken – and do Project Sponsors decide on next steps within days of a project's end, not months? | |
Total Work Culture | / 20 |
9. Reading the Results
Add up the scores per section. Each total tells you how ready that phase – or your work culture – is. The pattern across all six sections tells you where to start.
Total | Readiness | What to do |
5–9 | Not ready | Build the basics before you start projects in this phase. Projects started now will struggle to deliver results – or deliver results nobody acts on. |
10–14 | Partly ready | Run single projects, and close the gaps you have identified in parallel. |
15–17 | Ready | The phase works. Make it repeatable and independent of individual people. |
18–20 | Systematic | Keep it that way, and use the phase as a reference for the others. |
Don't rely on the overall total alone. The weakest phase limits the whole system. An excellent validation process is worth little if Phase III never decides which ideas go there, or if nobody takes over the results in Phase V. A low work culture score drags every phase down with it.
Keep in mind
The interfaces between phases matter as much as the phases themselves. For every phase, ask one more question: does its output reach the next phase in a form people can actually use? A low score here often explains why good projects never make it to the market.