Tag: "metrics"

Global Steps in Innovation

Many folks liken the process of innovation to a baseball diamond:

First base – Vision

Second base – Strategy

Third base – Ranking priorities

Home – Alignment of resources: people, places, services.

We need the relevant people who share a common understanding of the vision and the strategy, accept the validity of that direction, and have a passionate commitment to make it work. We also need senior executive leadership support, a comprehensive, adaptable communication plan, a contract for buy-in to goals & direction, a creative focus on the few highest priority initiatives, as well as a governance process for investment (priorities), aligned pay-for-performance metrics, group leadership development, values-based goals, milestones & metrics.

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Jan 15, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

The Pace and Cadence of Innovation

Surges can be anticipated

Surges can be anticipated

Let’s face it, innovation is not like a finely-tuned engine operating at optimum capacity all of the time. How do you anticipate the ebbs and flows that invariably crop up with the pace of innovation, let alone the workload (which is often independent of innovation)? How do handle the inevitable slow periods of innovation? How do you spark the team out of an innovation slump? What metrics beyond gut feel do you use to measure the current pace of innovation?

To start, let your team see the big picture, to remind and spark their intuitive skills and abilities. Seeing the big picture allows your team to make insights and set directions whereas everyday working events tend to keep their attention.

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Oct 18, 2009 | 1 comment View Post

Metrics: Measure your productivity

Most executives believe that innovation will enable their company to stand out in the marketplace, especially in this economy. Yet, executives do not develop the strategies and execute the follow through necessary to create their innovation environment.

How do you measure that innovation has been optimized? Especially for use as a performance assessment tool? It is not as simple as the perecentage of sales from products introduced within the last five years. Each industry has its on uptake pattern for new products and each category of product has its own lifecycle.

Decisions on product development to proceed to market is based on getting the right information to the right persons at the right time. Optimum information flow requires open communication. One or two key metrics will provide focus, and other metrics help to define other areas that need help.

Using sports as an analogy, the final score of the game is what really matters as the focal point to measure performance, whereas other metrics can be used to illuminate areas needing improvement. In other situations, the obvious problems will arise without the use of metrics.

Clearly,innovation must be driven from the top executive on down throughout the organization. Where do you start? Start in a small part of the organization, assess, fine tune, and modify to optimize for the whole organization.

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Sep 04, 2009 | 0 comments View Post