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We have started research among corporate companies in South Africa to understand the state of innovation within big business. Selected companies were polled and through a structured conversation the interviewer rated the company in terms of the following criteria: 
Each criteria links back to either the “Culture” or the “Tools” theme, which enabled us to categorise organisations in one of 4 categories. These categories are also an indication of the level of complexity to implement our solution. They are: Level
| Description
| Complexity
(Approximate months before results become visible) | Level 1
| Mostly to total “clean slate” that needs many tools and complete change in culture | Very high (12 months)
| Level 2
| Innovation is recognised in some way and adds some value
| High (8 months) | | Level 3 | Getting there: need refinement of existing processes, systems and change management programmes | Medium (6 months) | | Level 4 | Innovation is already integral to the organisation | Low (2 – 4 months) |
More data will be collected going forward but to give an indication of the state of innovation currently, results were grouped in type of organisation (i.e. government, service, industry) or type of business (Academic, Beverages, Coaching, Communication, Energy, Financial, and Media).
25 Companies were contacted with 14 successful calls. It is important to note that Government departments included in this study skew the results for the Government category as we have only contacted those that we have already done innovation work for. Many companies confuse innovation with technology improvements, and it generally took much more than one call to speak to a person that can answer all the questions. Our results were as follows: | | Industry
| Culture
| Tool
| Overall | 12
| Academic | 12 | 1
| 13 | | 11 | Food & Beverage | 9 | 11
| 20
| 10
| Communication | 19 | 18
| 39
| 9
| Financial
| 5.75
| 5.625 | 11.375
| 8
| Gov | 16 | 10
| 26
| 7
| Media | 13.5 | 12.5 | 26
| 6
| Mining | 8 | 4
| 12
| | 5 | Energy | 6 | 6 | 12
| 4
| Gov | 16
| 10
| 26
| | 3 | Industry | 7 | 5
| 12
| 2
| Service | 9 | 8
| 17
| 1
| Overall | 9 | 7
| 16
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Placed on the model it shows that most organisations would need a fairly intense process to implement a holistic innovation capability. Evaluating innovation state 
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