Measuring the success of innovation - "Great landing, wrong airport"
Niklas Osslén
Curious leader and tech enthusiast. Innovating for a resilient world class supply chain.
Some thoughts about how to measure the success of innovation.
First of all, we probably have to accept that we cannot measure innovation.
The gap between an early innovation until we have later realized business outcomes, is too wide for us to effectively steer and make meaningful decisions, here and now.
When we just have accepted that, we simply can continue measure it like everything else, like projects and portfolios, by time, cost and outcomes. But, we absolutely need to complemented with performance metrics that drives the right behavior or even better, several good behaviors in one, and show that we are on the right track.
Too often we tend to only measure the easy things, and create a performance metrics theater.
We get stuck in a Mexican stand-off between what business management learn: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”. Peter F. Drucker (but also attributed to others)
Or the other side, stating “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”. Albert Einstein (but also attributed to others)
We need to find good qualitative measurements on innovation.
Measure that we are doing the right things, not only doing things right. It does not matter how efficient we are in doing something, if we are going in the wrong direction - great landing, wrong airport.
I am curious to understand, how do You work? Have You found any qualitative metrics ?
Head of Innovations - Supply Chain at Inter IKEA Group
2 年Great topic Niklas Osslén. Can it be, that even the very first question requires re-thinking? There might be several "right airports" at any given moment. Which one we land at, might be secondary to get moving. After all, there exists many futures.
VD/General Manager @ AVEVA Select Scandinavia | Support Industrial Operational Excellence
2 年Im always tempted to sports analogy! What took i.e. Dick Fosbury and Jan Bokl?v to continue "their innovations" and change the game completely? What inspired and motivated them to continue practice day after day...? How many innovations do we miss in our (business) lifes du to being inpatient or fail fast mindset? #trueinnovation #challengestatusquo
Specialist- AI, Industrial AI, Intelligent Products, Connected Plants/ Industry 4.0, Connected Services, Digital Thread
2 年Just to bring another analogy " Innovation is like doing Yoga" - The benefit/Outcome can't be measured or evident but it has potential to avoid major disaster ( very much applicable.in business context as well).
Unfolding untapped business potentials with GenAI enabling magic | ex-Microsoft
2 年Thank you for bringing this topic up Niklas, it's a delicate yet important matter for all of us reinventing businesses. The picture I took the freedom to add is for me a good way to re-evaluate the innovative maturity and capacity a firm withholds. The innovation and growth strategy is needed to define your unit’s ambitions and opportunities. I incapsulated what I've learnt from approaching and bringing innovation by a structured and highly governed process, might spark some thoughts? https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/why-immediately-should-stop-leading-your-intelligence-mats-stuhrmann/