Analyze innovative capabilities of your employees with Innovation Metrics

In today's world, it is very important to exploit the innovative capabilities of the employees so as to develop new business techniques in the face of modern technological advancements, empowerment of customers, new entrants in the market, shorter life cycle of the products, globalization of the market and geopolitical instability. The development of the innovative capabilities of individuals is the only to sustain an advantage over the competitors.

In every field, the leading company is the seen to be the innovator. Until now, innovation has been considered as some kind of black art. Managers of today's world still lack the metrics that are required to take informed decisions about the innovative programs. There are some metrics that have developed for the development of new product. But these metrics are very limited. Managers are not fully equipped with the right metrics to measure the innovativeness of a particular program.

There are quite a few reasons that support the importance of innovative metrics for the development of a company. Firstly, they help the mangers to come up with an informed decision that is based on objective data. This is valuable because certain projects might have be long term and might also have risks attached to it. Also metrics affect behavior of the employees by aligning goals and actions that are in the best interest of the organization or company.

Most of the companies that measure their innovativeness do so with the help of Research and Development or by product development metrics. These might be useful but are limited in their scope as they are not capable of measuring the overall effectiveness of the innovations on the company. While paying attention to technological development, often innovation related to business concept is neglected.

There should be a framework for the selection of metrics that can help the mangers to track the success rates of innovation in the companies. These metrics would be helpful for the senior executives to assess the innovativeness of the company which will combat the dangerous strategy decay that afflicts the business of a company. Strategies might decay due to various reasons and hence innovation is the key of success for any company.

Companies that are not able to innovate for themselves must learn to buy it. For example, if company's main product is out of demand then it can buy a lesser company whose products are still in demand. However, this innovation strategy is good only for a short term. In order to innovate things by themselves, the companies should have a balance between investment in the current business and innovation. The company should also assess the capability of the company to turn its resources of innovation into business opportunities. Also the leadership of the company has to be assesses in terms of its supportiveness towards any innovation.

Innovation metrics is important, because it is not really possible to manage something by measuring it. Innovation metrics is a tool to motivate the managers and leaders of the company to embrace innovation and give it priority. The goals of innovation need to be communicated and rewards for achieving milestones should be set. This helps in the acceleration of the pace of ideas that can be implemented. Innovation metrics can be applied in various fields in the company including process, planning and people.