If innovation is not part of your business strategy, the best result you can expect in the future is stagnation. Without innovation, it’s impossible for any company to grow and expand. This is why we want to share with you – how you can measure the level of innovation in your company.
This specific activity can be used for the creation of new products and services, but many companies use this activity to improve their business processes in general too. If you conduct research, you will notice that there are thousands of examples where companies have reached new heights as a result of new innovative services and/or products.
These facts are something that most entrepreneurs and other business owners know, but it seems that many of them still don’t understand this concept. For many business people, innovation is simply a process which leads to the creation of brand new products or ideas.
However, the truth is that the most effective innovations in business are the innovations that are focused on reshaping and redesigning existing ideas, products and services for improved results. In other words, you don’t have to start from scratch in order to witness positive results. But, how are these positive results measured? How can one determine the level of innovation in a company?
Innovation measurement and testing
Let’s be clear – the innovation process is not simple, but it doesn’t have to be complicated either. If you figure out how to measure the level of innovation in your company, you will make things way simpler and more effective. Of course, you have to identify and understand all the elements that are part of this process.
Every business manager must measure innovation, but in order to do this in a proper way, they have to use adequate methods. Keep in mind that this measurement is related to overall business performance measurement. This makes sense because the business process consists of many different elements that are interconnected. Now let’s move from theory to practice.
If you learn how to measure the level of innovation, you will get an answer to another important question – how to innovate better. To identify important innovation measures, you will have to understand why is innovation crucial for your company.
After that, you should come up with a procedure that you will use in the process of innovation and check the progress of this activity all the time. It’s interesting that the results may look to be accidental, but this is the case only in situations where you have used innovation measurement that is not related to the proper factors. So, you have to classify the measures in the right way.
Today, there are many different methodologies that business owners are using to find reliable measures for innovation. The vast majority of these methods define rules or simply list things that have to be completed. In any case, it’s usually not easy for business owners to make a forecast related to the results of the process of innovation. That’s logical because the majority of these businesses use wrong metrics.
To measure the level of innovation, you will have to use accounting and financial history as a foundation. At this point, you must include the measurements for all the new services and products that have been promoted by your company or that were tested in the past. In addition, you will have to include all the patents, trademarks, different versions of the services and products that your business has introduced and all the articles.
For many people, this won’t sound very difficult, but don’t forget that this is just one stage of the process. This means that you must include a few other measures to assess the level of innovation.
Different companies need different strategies for innovation measurement, but there are a few things that are used in almost all measurements of the level of innovation. For starters, it’s important to evaluate the innovation strategy that is used in the company and check whether it matches the current company’s goals and vision. After that, it’s assessed how the innovation process is managed by all participants – all employees.
Another important thing that affects the level of innovation is teamwork. You must ensure that managers and designated teams are allocating human resources, time and other resources important for the innovation projects in the right way. It would be good to assess the business model and its impact on innovation.
Finally, you should check the decision-making process. Are all the meaningful ideas analyzed properly or there is an atmosphere in the company that keeps innovativeness down?
Every company owner or manager can conduct research like this. However, this is an activity that requires time and energy and when it’s not done in the right way, you can expect more harm than good from this process.
Hiring a professional agency that can measure the level of innovation in your company is a smart move that can help you finish this procedure in the right way.
