“Primes” - Individuals acting as executives in their organizations (company, business unit, department, team, etc.) and who are interested in a personal CoV Guide assessment of their organizations. As such, they subscribe to one or more personal diagnostic assessment of their organizations. Once the Primes submit their answers to the CoV Guide questionnaire, they will be provided almost instantaneously with a full CoV Guide report, which they can see on-line or can download as a PDF or Word document.

Organization “Primes” (CEOs, C-suite executives, heads of business units, department heads, etc.) who are interested in “team assessments” of their organization. We call them “Team Primes”.

1. Team Primes need, at the time they decide on the subscription level, to define how many “Team Members” in their organization should participate in the CoV Guide assessment; e.g. prime+1 team member, prime +2 team members, up to prime + 7 team members. Of course, more team members can be accommodated on request. Team Primes pay for the entire assessment and no charges are levied against individual Team Members.
2. As well, the Team Primes have the option of selecting to pay for more than one team diagnostic thus achieving significant volume cost savings.
3. Once registered and safely logged-in, the Team Primes can proceed to use the CoV Guide tool for their personal assessment of the organization. In the process, the Team Primes select the target markets and the specific competitors for all the team members’ assessments.
4. At registration, the CoV Guide provides the Team Primes their corresponding “Team Codes” which uniquely identify the teams and their specific competitive assessments. The Team Primes must invite (by email preferably) the designated Team Members to participate in the assessment by letting them know of the assessment, the on-line address of the CoV Guide tool and the specific Team Code for the assessment. On submission of their answers, Team Members are provided with their own individual CoV Guide reports.
5. The CoV Guide provides the Team Primes with information on the Status of the team assessment. The Status identifies the state (complete or incomplete) of individual Team Members assessments and offers the Team Prime the option of requesting completion. The Team Primes can look at any individual reports. Moreover, they can compare any two assessments of their choice – usually between their own views and the vies of certain Team Members.

“Team Members” are the individuals selected by a Prime as key resources in the organization (company C-suite executives, business unit senior managers, people with high responsibilities in a department, etc.) whose personal assessments of the organization are much valued by the Prime.

1. Team Members receive an email invitation from the Prime containing both the address of the CoV Guide tool and the specific Team Code which they need to register as Team members at no cost to themselves.
2. Once registered and logged-in securely, a Team Member can proceed to undertake a personal CoV Guide assessment of the organization.
3. Once the Team Members submit their answers to the CoV Guide questionnaire, they will be provided almost instantaneously with a full CoV Guide report, which they can see on-line or can download as a PDF or Word document.

“Investors” are people (financial institution representatives, or simply persons on the corporate finance committee, etc.) that might have an interest in investing into an organization (company, business unit, team looking for investment in their project, etc.).

1. In general, Investors do not assess the organization by themselves. They just get access to the assessments made by the Prime and the Team members of the organization.
2. Usually, an investor is invited is invited by the Prime to have a look at the organization assessment as part of the due diligence process, thus getting a quick comprehensive understanding on how the key people in the organization assess their competitive capabilities and management processes.
3. The Prime invitation must contain the CoV Guide address and the organization’s Due Diligence Code, which the Prime receives automatically on identifying an Investor. In such situations, Investors do not have to pay anything for having access to the organization’s reports.
4. If the Investor is interested in a company and wants the company to do an assessment, that can be done either by requesting the company prime to register, subscribe (pay) and then provide the Team Code to the Investor for analyzing the assessment. Alternatively, Investors can choose to subscribe (and pay) by themselves prior to inviting the organizations’ Primes to proceed with their organizations’ assessments at no cost to themselves.

“Consultants” are people (who have been commissioned to help an organization (company, business unit, department, etc.) to grow its business. Consultants are assumed to have gone through the necessary CoV Guide training that is being handled separately by c-IM&E Inc. (see “How to become a CoV Guide consultant”.)

1. In general, like Investors, Consultants do not do personal assessments of the company.
2. Consultants are being invited by the respective Primes to analyze the results of the organization’s assessments in order to understand the organization better and proceed to make educated recommendations on how grow the organization value through better innovation management practices and a more effective culture of entrepreneurship.

(CoV Guide Version 2 ) “Survey Administrators” are people (government agency/program representatives, industry association executives, consultant/research organizations representatives) who are interested in, and have the authority to, assess the competitive situation and the innovation management capabilities of a group of companies in a region (country, state/province, etc.) or in a specific industry sector within that region.

1. At registration, the Survey Admins have the option of n-constraints subscription at the standard individual assessment cost, or they can select volume-discount subscriptions with specific numbers of companies in their surveys..
2. On registration, the Survey Admin receives a “Survey Code” which must be given to all the target “Survey Participants” in a letter/email inviting them to participate in the survey. The letter must also contain the address of the CoV Guide tool with the indication to register – at no cost - as “Survey Participants” using the specified Survey Code.
3. The Survey Admins can view the status of completion of the survey as well as a CoV Guide report capturing the analysis of the survey. They can do more in-depth analyses using pre-selected filters or can apply to c-IM&E Inc. personnel for specific analyses based on their own selected criteria.

(CoV Guide Version 2) “Survey Participants” are company executives who have been invited to participate in a survey..

1. Survey Participants register as such at no cost to themselves, even if they have registered previously in other roles. The no-cost registration is made using the Survey Code supplied by the Survey Admin.
2. Once securely logged-in as Survey participants, they can proceed to do their personal assessments and receive their own assessment reports. But no more.
3. It is up to the Survey Admin to share or not the full CoV Guide survey report with the Survey Participants.