Innovation Mindset Profile (IMP)

The Innovation Mindset Profile (IMP) is a psychometric tool designed to assess four key dimensions of personality that underpin innovative behaviour in the workplace. Based on rigorous research and validated with high-performing professionals, the IMP helps individuals and organisations understand how different personality traits contribute to innovation, adaptability, and value creation in dynamic work environments.

The Four Dimensions Assessed

• Optimism: How individuals balance the drive for change with the value of stability.

• Assertiveness: The interplay between team goals and personal ambition.

• Insubordination: The willingness to challenge norms versus respect for established rules.

• Judiciousness: Decision-making styles ranging from collective to autonomous.

Each scale is scored on a 9-point stanine scale, benchmarked against a working population. Reports provide clear, narrative feedback on individual scores, with automated summaries designed for both self-reflection and coaching conversations.

Who Is It For?

The IMP is suitable for use in leadership development, team building, innovation training, talent management, and personal coaching. It is particularly valuable for identifying latent innovation potential and understanding how different traits interact within organisational cultures.

Interpreting Your Scores

Scores are interpreted in relation to the working population. For example, a score of 5 is average, while scores of 7 or more, or 3 or less, indicate significant divergence. Importantly, no score is inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’; context is key. A rebellious streak may fuel creativity in one environment and create friction in another. Successful innovation often depends on the alignment between mindset and organisational culture.

Validation

The IMP was initially piloted with MBA students from the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, a cohort expected to exhibit strong innovation profiles. Mean scores across all dimensions were in the above-average range, validating the profile’s sensitivity to individual differences in innovation-related traits.

The Quest for Innovation in the Modern Organisation

Innovation has become a defining feature of organisational success in the 21st century. Companies seek to future-proof themselves not only by developing new products and services but also by fostering workforces capable of generating, embracing, and sustaining change. Yet while innovation is universally desired, its psychological underpinnings are less easily grasped. What makes someone likely to think innovatively? How do individual traits support—or hinder—the innovation process? These questions lie at the intersection of occupational psychology and human resource management, and they are increasingly being answered through the application of psychometric assessments.

Historical Foundations: From General Aptitude to Creative Traits

The roots of psychometric assessment in employment contexts go back to early 20th-century efforts to match individuals with vocational paths using tools like the Kuder Preference Record or Birkman Method. The post-war period saw a shift towards assessing general cognitive ability, personality, and emotional intelligence. However, the trait most closely aligned with innovation—creativity—was often treated as elusive and context-bound, limiting its use in structured occupational assessments.

Only in recent decades has the demand for workforce innovation driven the development of more precise tools aimed at identifying innovation potential. These newer assessments have drawn upon research into personality traits, behavioural preferences, and organisational climate to better map the capacity for innovation in practical settings.

The Landscape of Contemporary Innovation Assessments

Today, innovation assessments can be broadly categorised into three types:

• Personality-Based Instruments: These include MBTI, DISC, and Big Five models, which provide general personality insights but often lack specific predictive power regarding innovation. The Hogan Development Survey adds nuance by identifying derailers, but its scope remains broad.
• Creativity and Cognitive Style Measures: Tools like the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) or Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI) focus on divergent thinking or cognitive preference. While useful, they do not directly link to workplace behaviours or contexts.
• Innovation-Specific Assessments: The Innovation Potential Indicator (IPI), Situational Outlook Questionnaire (SOQ), and Foursight Thinking Profile are examples of tools developed to measure attitudes, preferences, or climate factors linked to innovation. However, these often lack the granularity, narrative depth, or norm-referenced scoring needed for individual profiling.

What Makes the IMP Unique

The IMP stands out in several key respects:

• Trait-Specific Narrative Feedback: Each of the 9 stanine points per scale has a unique, psychologically nuanced narrative. These texts avoid pathologising low scores and provide strengths-based framing for all profiles.
• Directional Scoring System: Each item is psychometrically aligned to its intended trait direction, reducing distortion from socially desirable responses and allowing for meaningful aggregation.
• Real-World Validity: IMP items are rooted in workplace-relevant behaviours, such as coping with ambiguity, challenging authority, or balancing team collaboration with autonomy. This translates abstract traits into concrete insights.
• Balanced Innovation Typology: Unlike many tools that valorise the ‘disruptor’ type, the IMP also recognises the value of consolidators, loyalists, and cautious thinkers. Innovation, as framed by the IMP, is situationally appropriate and organisationally contingent.
• Flexibility of Use: With automated feedback reports, standardised scoring, and compatibility with both coaching and HR systems, the IMP is suited for individual development, team diagnostics, and large-scale innovation audits.

Sample Narrative Illustrations

A respondent who scores a 9 on Insubordination may be described as a strategic maverick whose independence can challenge norms productively—though not without friction. Meanwhile, someone with a 1 on the same scale may be deeply loyal and rule-abiding, essential for stability in highly regulated industries. The narrative references both contexts, affirming both profiles as valid depending on organisational needs.

Likewise, a score of 5 on Optimism is not neutral or bland—it indicates a thoughtful balance between aspiration and realism. The IMP’s power lies in this granularity and the psychological empathy embedded in the language.

Applications in Human Resource Management

IMP has wide applicability in:

• Recruitment: Identifying candidates with trait profiles that fit the organisation’s innovation goals.
• Leadership Development: Coaching leaders to understand their innovation mindsets and where they may need complementary team members.
• Team Composition: Balancing teams to include both risk-takers and process-stabilisers.
• Change Readiness Audits: Assessing organisational appetite and capacity for innovation-led change.

Because IMP is normed and modular, it can also be integrated into performance management and professional development systems.

Ethical Considerations and Future Directions

Psychometric assessments carry ethical implications. The IMP avoids simplistic labelling, instead promoting developmental insight. As AI and adaptive testing technologies advance, future versions of the IMP may integrate dynamic item selection or contextual response analysis.

Ongoing validation studies, especially in diverse international contexts, will further enhance its robustness. Its integration with platforms for leadership development, digital coaching, or workforce planning may also broaden its strategic value.

Innovation as a Human Attribute

In a world driven by digital transformation and volatility, innovation remains a human imperative. The Innovation Mindset Profile offers a nuanced, evidence-based, and practically deployable method of identifying and nurturing this capacity. By bridging classic psychometrics with contemporary workplace psychology, the IMP stands as both a tool and a framework for thinking differently about what it means to be innovative.

It recognises that innovation is not a single trait but a constellation of mindsets—and that every organisation needs not only visionaries but also ethical collaborators, courageous questioners, and pragmatic optimists.