A diagnostic and decision-making system for innovation teams
See where your innovation is actually heading.
Innovation Route is built for teams who can't afford to confuse motion with progress. It is structured around the Innovation State Vector™ — a nine-dimensional instrument that shows not only where an innovation stands today, but the direction and speed at which it is moving.
The instrument problem
Most innovation assessments are snapshots. Snapshots tell you where you are. They don't tell you whether you're moving, how fast, or in which direction.
Boards, sponsors, and operators keep making allocation decisions on the wrong instrument — and then wondering why the portfolio looked healthy right up to the point it wasn't. Innovation Route replaces the static readout with a trajectory.
The framework
The Innovation State Vector
A state vector is the minimum information needed to compute a trajectory — borrowed from control theory and orbital mechanics, where position alone tells you nothing about where a system is headed. Innovation Route applies that idea to innovation management: a nine-dimensional instrument measuring both position and velocity across Customer, Technology, Business Model, Intellectual Property, Team, Funding, Regulatory, Supply Chain, and Ecosystem. The result is not a score. It is a direction.
Where it needs to go.
Define the target dimensional profile the innovation needs to reach to be considered successful.
What stands in the way.
Map the gap between current position and destination, plus the ecosystem topology that shapes the path.
How to get there.
Compute, from trajectory analysis, which dimensions to advance, in what order, and through which actors.
Whether it arrived.
Re-measure at arrival. Did the dimensional scores reach the destination thresholds, or is it time to reroute?
Methodology
Built on two decades of prior work.
The Innovation State Vector is informed by a generation of readiness-level and innovation-assessment frameworks — NASA's Technology Readiness Levels, KTH's Innovation Readiness Level, the US DOE's Adoption Readiness Levels, the DOD's Manufacturing Readiness Levels, Steve Blank's Customer Development model, and Alex Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas.
What it adds: a single nine-dimensional instrument with consistent 1–9 scoring across every dimension, a velocity layer that turns a static assessment into a trajectory, and a routing protocol that translates that trajectory into a decision. It borrows its structural metaphor from state-space control theory — where position alone is never enough to predict where a system is heading.
Who it is for
For teams whose decisions don't have room for hand-wavy progress reports.
Accelerators & venture programs
A cohort-level assessment that gives mentors, operators, and sponsors a shared, comparable language for progress — and a cleaner narrative for the next reporting cycle.
University innovation centers
Structured assessment and outcome reporting that holds up in front of deans, donors, and program leads — without collapsing the nuance of the work into a single score.
Corporate innovation teams
Board-ready clarity on which bets are actually moving, which are stalled, and where the next dollar of attention belongs — before the portfolio review, not after.
The offer
The Pilot Workshop
A one-day facilitated diagnostic delivered by Innovation Route. Your team leaves with a written trajectory for every innovation in the room, the dimensions that need attention first, and a decision-grade summary you can walk into an executive review with on Monday.
- 01Pre-session intake across all nine dimensions.
- 02Live, facilitated assessment with your team in the room.
- 03Routing-protocol readout — Destination, Terrain, Route, Proof.
- 04Written summary with recommended next moves and re-measurement cadence.
Founding team
Academic rigor meets operator execution.
Filip Čučkov
Director, Auster Center · Tufts University
Created the Innovation State Vector as a nine-dimensional framework for assessing innovation trajectory — drawing on state-space control theory and two decades of prior readiness-level work across engineering, venture, and public-sector innovation.
LinkedIn →Milos Zikic
Founder, SpiceFactory · Boston
Founder of SpiceFactory, co-founder of LasoExperience, and board member at HeapSpace — where he co-created Voxxed Days Belgrade and helped build one of the Balkans' largest developer communities.
LinkedIn →Stay informed
We're opening the first cohort in Q2 2026.
Get the framework notes, the worked examples, and the pilot announcement — the same briefing we send to partners and prospective cohort members.
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