The Standard · Strategy and Leadership
Innovation
Uses AI to generate and test ideas and judges which are worth pursuing.
You use AI to reframe challenges, generate diverse concepts, validate assumptions, and choose what deserves investment. It can widen options and speed learning, but may favour polished ideas, invent evidence, or hide critical risks.
The exam for Innovation is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Innovation, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the assistant to surface overlooked concepts, alternatives, and needs beyond your initial innovation ideas.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with the challenge, audience, evidence, criteria, and required format for an innovation output.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You combine generated concepts with validation learning and your judgement in a clear recommendation colleagues can use.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check idea claims, assumptions, and validation conclusions against source evidence before recommending innovation action.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep proprietary concepts, personal data, and sensitive research details out of innovation prompts and outputs.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which innovation work the assistant supports and which concept, risk, or investment decisions remain with people.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A diverse idea set from a defined challenge, with overlooked options and criteria for selecting candidates.
- 02
A rapid validation plan from a promising concept, including its critical assumption, evidence, and learning measure.
- 03
A launch recommendation from validation findings, comparing whether to iterate, pivot, or scale and why.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in innovation. They briefed the assistant with a challenge and criteria, caught unsupported assumptions, and delivered a tested innovation recommendation.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Innovation
- Who it is for
- Innovation leads, product managers, researchers, and strategy directors who need disciplined judgement on new ideas.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Project Planning
Plans projects with AI and stress-tests the schedule, dependencies and risks.
Practice only
- Agile Teams
Runs agile work with AI in the loop and the team in charge.
- Change Management
Leads change with AI-assisted analysis and communication and keeps the human case central.
- Event Planning
Plans events with AI and verifies logistics, budgets and commitments.
- Strategic Thinking
Thinks strategically with AI as a challenger and reaches conclusions they can defend.
- Decision Making
Makes decisions with AI-assisted analysis and knows when the analysis cannot be trusted.
- Design Thinking
Applies design thinking with AI for research, ideation and prototyping, with users at the centre.
- Stakeholder Management
Manages stakeholders with AI-assisted mapping and communication that stays accurate and discreet.
Everything in Strategy and Leadership, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Innovation covers this skill. No book is required to pass.