There are many who say that you can only manage what you can measure. I tend to agree with that sentiment so how can I then suggest that Innovation can be managed successfully?
The answer is that Innovation can be measured. What's new I hear you ask? We have always been able to measure this using Key Performance Indicators. KPIs do not measure Innovation directly, they measure the result of Innovation. This is nit picking a little but imagine setting up an Innovation project, and the finding out from your KPIs that the number of widgets falling off your production line has doubled.
At first this seems good but ask yourself how many widgets could you actually produce? How will you know when your Innovation project really is producing the goods? Would it be nice to actually look at that process itself?
The Innovation Toolkit from Creative Business Solutions does just that. At a top level it provides some graphical output that gives you a feel for how you are doing and then provides some more concrete results so that you can a) see what you are currently doing well b) create an action plan to fix the things that are not doing so well.
All of this looks at 'soft factors' such as culture, leadership and management, desire to win, grasp of external factors etc.
To find out more about managing Innovation visit http://www.creative4business.co.uk/innovation.html now.
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