The Ascendant Innovation Maturity Model is a strategic framework designed to measure and benchmark where your organization stands on its innovation journey — with a focus on the unique realities of government and public service delivery.
ASCENDANT'S INNOVATION MATURITY MODEL
Innovation in the public sector isn't just about new technology or updated processes. It's about transforming culture, strategy, and operations to better serve communities and respond to the changing needs of the people who depend on you.
Public sector organizations face complex challenges that demand solutions built around people — maximizing taxpayer value, improving services, and ensuring equitable access to resources.
The Ascendant Innovation Maturity Model is designed specifically for this context, offering a clear, structured path to building innovation capability without the complexity.
The model helps organizations assess where they are today, identify gaps, and implement targeted strategies to move forward. By measuring and benchmarking progress, it provides a practical roadmap for achieving greater innovation maturity — leading to more efficient operations, better service delivery, and improved outcomes for the communities you serve.
Importantly, the model reflects the reality that innovation is not a straight line.
Every organization starts from a different place, with its own unique strengths, resources, and challenges. Whether you're just beginning your innovation journey or looking to reach the next level, the Ascendant Innovation Maturity Model provides the insights and benchmarks to guide continuous improvement — and position your organization as a leader in public sector innovation.
Stages of Innovation Maturity
01
Initial Stage:
Recognize the Need for Innovation
02
Formative Stage:
Define Innovation Frameworks and Processes
03
Structured Stage:
Establish the Role of Innovation
04
Sustained Stage:
Build an Innovation Ecosystem
05
Transformative Stage:
Govern a Culture of Innovation
At the Initial Stage, innovation is largely unexplored — any activity is ad-hoc, uncoordinated, and unsupported by formal processes or evaluation.
At the Formative Stage, innovation begins to take hold in isolated pockets, with growing recognition of its potential and early adoption of tools and mindsets — but no organization-wide culture yet.
At the Structured Stage, innovation becomes formalized with a clear vision, strategy, and supporting structures — shifting from isolated efforts to a coordinated, organization-wide approach.
At the Sustained Stage, innovation is embedded in governance, policies, and operations organization-wide — systematically managed, strategically aligned, and delivering long-term impact.
At the Transformative Stage, innovation is central to the organization's identity — fully embedded across all operations, consistently delivering measurable community impact, advancing equity, and setting the standard for global public sector leadership.
Categories of Assessment
Culture
Culture tracks how an organization grows its approach to innovation — from risk-averse and unsupported, to one where creative thinking is part of daily life. Over time, innovation becomes central to strategy, leadership actively drives it, and processes become more structured and scalable. The physical and digital environment also evolves to better support collaboration, ultimately leading to continuous improvement in services and social outcomes.
Capacity
Capacity reflects the resources an organization has to support innovation — including technology, budget, staff, systems, and training. Early on, these resources are minimal with no formal structure. Over time, dedicated roles, teams, and training programs emerge, eventually led by a Chief Innovation Officer. Funding becomes more strategic, technology more robust, and innovation skills spread across all levels. At full maturity, innovation is well-resourced and deeply embedded organization-wide, with strong leadership buy-in and the agility to respond quickly to new challenges and opportunities.
Skills
Skills covers the key competencies organizations need to innovate effectively — including data, human-centered design (HCD), behavioral economics, and strategic foresight. Early on, these are applied informally. As the organization matures, they become systematically embedded: data management grows more structured, HCD becomes the default approach to problem-solving, behavioral economics informs evidence-based decisions, and strategic foresight helps anticipate future challenges. Together, these competencies build a culture where data, empathy, and forward thinking combine to deliver practical, lasting solutions.
Impact
Outcomes measures how well an organization uses innovation to drive positive change internally and in the wider community. Early on, metrics are unclear and improvements are largely untracked. Over time, metrics become more defined and consistently used to inform decisions, improve services, and report progress publicly. At full maturity, robust cross-departmental analytics guide strategy, drive continuous improvement, and deliver equitable, transformative outcomes that meet community needs and set new standards of excellence.
Ecosystem
Ecosystem evaluates how effectively an organization collaborates with internal and external partners to drive innovation. Early on, feedback and collaboration are informal and sporadic. Over time, structured mechanisms emerge for working across internal silos and with external partners — including residents, service providers, academics, and startups. At full maturity, these partnerships become central to the innovation framework, with diverse, ongoing collaborations that deepen community understanding, source ideas broadly, and achieve greater impact than any single partner could deliver alone.