Insights from the 3rd Spanish Innovation Index Conference

What customers think about a company's innovations matters more than what the company counts as innovation. That is the core premise behind the Índice Español de Innovación (IEI) — and it was on full display at the 3rd IEI Conference, held on March 13 at the Campus UC3M Puerta de Toledo in Madrid.

The conference brought together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to advance the conversation about customer-based innovation measurement — a field that challenges the traditional, internally focused view of innovation KPIs.

The Story Behind the Scale

The Perceived Firm Innovativeness (PFI) scale, which underpins the Spanish Innovation Index, traces directly back to academic research developed within the Innovation Index Coalition (IIC). Werner Kunz, who developed the original scale, was invited as a guest speaker — a recognition that the methodological foundation of the IEI has global reach and is being applied across multiple national contexts.

The talk identifies four drivers of firm innovativeness: a relentless commitment to new ideas**, pioneering leadership that creates markets rather than competing in them, hiring for cultural fit with innovation, and a speed-first culture that collapses the gap between idea and execution. These factors are measurable from the customer's perspective — which is exactly what the Perceived Firm Innovativeness (PFI) scale captures, and what national Innovation Indexes like the IEI track over time. The data show that customers notice when a company has this mindset, and they reward it.

Why the IEI Stands Out

The IEI does not ask companies to count patents or R&D budgets. It asks their customers. The result is a measure that captures what actually matters for market performance: whether customers experience a firm as innovative. That shift in perspective is what makes the index actionable for both management and policy.

People Who Made It Happen

The event was organized by Lola C. Duque and Luis Santamaría Sánchez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), with the broader IIC network in attendance. The coalition, originally set in motion by Tor Wallin Andreassen, now spans multiple countries and continues to grow.