Page 11 - UKZN MIMI Report 2025

3. THE MuNICIPAL INNOVATION MATuRITY INDEX (MIMI)
3.1 About MIMI
MIMI is a decision support tool designed to measure municipalities’ innovation capabilities, practices, and readiness to adopt innovation(s) to improve the delivery of basic services. The tool measures the capabilities of individual employees and munic- ipalities to learn, implement, adopt, and institutionalise innovations that can improve the delivery of basic services. It assesses and benchmarks the Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) readiness level of municipalities. MIMI can be used to determine the innovation maturity levels of municipalities, identify areas of improvement in adopting innovative practices, and provide insights for municipalities to plan for innovation to migrate to higher levels of innovation maturity. The MIMI framework applies 6 level objective criteria for assessing the maturity of the innovation practices in municipalities clustered around three constructs (Municipal Enablers of Innovation, Management Support for Innovation, and Individual Innovation Behaviour).
The desired outcomes of MIMI are to:
• embed MIMI as a local government sector-wide instrument to assess the capacity of municipalities;
• innovate and produce periodic municipal innovation practices reports;
• create awareness about the innovation capacity and innovation performance of municipalities;
• introduce MIMI as a credible and accessible instrument with maximum support for use as a tool by municipal
sector stakeholders to encourage and benchmark innovation in municipalities;
• position the use of innovation assessment data as a process to inspire innovation practices and the adoption of
innovation in municipalities; and
• encourage municipalities to plan, invest, and implement innovation in their business process to deliver value
and fulfil their mandates.
3.2 MIMI framework and Maturity Levels
In its design, MIMI aims to be a self-reflexive tool that allows municipalities to reflect on their own innovation capabilities/maturity. The aim is for municipalities to engage in the process of collaboration and peer learning for the purpose of improving innovation maturity levels. This process is outlined in Figure 1.
MUNICIPAL INNOVATION MATURITY INDEX (MIMI)
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Figure 1. MIMI Self‐reflection process