Measuring Success: Evaluating Corporate Innovation Efforts

Measuring innovation success will allow you to identify both the positives and negatives to help guide your future decisions. A conscious effort to choose the right employee-driven ideas will provide a solid foundation but you also need to evaluate the innovations you’ve worked on and strategy as a whole. Here are the metrics to analyze.

Return on investment

Success may be measured in many ways. Ultimately, though, triumphs in other areas count for very little if your innovations do not lead to profits. The most common formula for measuring the return on investment is:

ROI = Net income / Cost of investment x 100

Measuring how much profit has been generated from an innovation will streamline the process of determining which ideas are worth pursuing or abandoning. 

Rate of idea generation

As already mentioned, choosing the right ideas to pursue is vital. However, it’s equally vital to ensure that ideas come thick and fast. Intrapreneurship can become accessible with the right tools. Additional points of focus include;

• Encouraging innovation at every level of the organization,
• Creating a psychologically safe space where employees don’t fear failure,
• Embracing  co-creation by involving customers in the creation process,
• Allowing employees to work on ideas as soon as they surface.

Aside from yielding a greater volume of ideas, it should bolster the quality of them too.

Time to market

The ‘time to market’ metric is one that measures how long it takes you to get your product to a point where it can be sold to customers. KICKBOX is a powerful platform that provides the framework to turn ideas into implemented products. Other ways to streamline the process;

• Use tools like augmented reality and virtual reality for smarter prototyping,
• Stop waiting for perfection by releasing products and using iteration to enhance them,
• Give employees time to actively work on their innovations

Business landscapes evolve at a rapid pace. If you’re not getting products out quickly, you’re not only delaying the route to revenue. You may also find that ideas are outdated by the time they hit the market.

Product longevity

When first launching a product, your attention will be focused on its initial success. But modern consumers are more demanding than ever and only innovative brands can meet those expectations. So, you must keep one eye on long-term outcomes by tracking;

• How many products remain in production after year one,
• The number of new customers beyond the initial launch,
• Returning customers through subscriptions or repeat purchases.

Product longevity may also be supported by the additional ideas that stem from the initial innovation, such as add-ons or accessories that enhance the user experience.

Employee retention rates

Finally, it’s not only customers who provide valuable insights into the success of your innovation efforts. Low staff turnover rates show that employees believe in the company and its innovations. To calculate employee retention rates, the formula is:

Retention Rate = (Remaining Headcount Beginning Headcount) x 100

Strong employee retention rates suggest that they are happy too, which puts them in the right frame of mind to be creative. So, your hopes of unearthing further ideas will improve.