Community Forum – Tell us how your organization assesses progress?

Our organization is moving from being customer-driven to being market-driven and we are looking at how to assess the progress of innovation in these market platforms. 

1. How does your organization track effectiveness of (or distinguish between) R&D programs versus effectiveness of Innovation focused programs? (R&D being defined as incremental and Innovation is defined as breakthrough)

• On our portfolio software Planview
• Input is distinguished via Ansoff; output is not differentiated
• Incremental is tracked at the BU-level and is primarily traditional product extensions.  Breakthrough is tracked at an Enterprise-level and is aligned with our longer-term growth strategy.
• New sales of a product to more than two customers.
• Risk-reward analysis; time horizons to commercialize/deployment; leverageable knowledge-gain.
• No difference.
• They are separate organizations and each uses different metrics to measure success.
• We treat them the same. We track ROI and number of projects complete per time period (quarter or year).
• Focus and metrics are based on Innovation.
• My organization does not distinguish between the two. Effectiveness of both are tracked via the vitality index.
• We primarily focus on research as the way to achieve breakthrough innovation; we don’t do as much development.
• We track funnel vitality by horizons – incremental, next generation, transformational, as well as new product sales generated from each.
• R&D and Innovation are handled by completely separate organizations. Innovation is evaluated based on the number of new technologies accepted by R&D for further work. R&D is judged by the number of technologies accepted by Market for product lines.

4.  How does your organization measure Strategic Alignment of Innovation programs with the business?

Yes – six responses; Comments:

• At time of initiation
• Qualitative self-assessment
• We have a board that evaluates the project proposal against the business priorities, then they choose to fund it or not.
• Specific strategic alignment questions rate all projects on a point scale assessing degree of alignment with defined strategies.
• Alignment is assessed at ideation stage by committee including, Sales, Marketing, R&D, Product Management.

Additional comments:

• No
• Focus the organization around a common innovation strategy that is enterprise-wide.
• Is it possible to measure “strategic alignment” at all? Innovation strategies are rather defined as part of the business strategy, thus, they should be aligned.
• Number of projects funded by the business vs corporate innovation and the number of new products transferred from corporate innovation to a business.
• Framing an opportunity with the expected outcomes/surprises; laying out hypothesis and scenarios [good & not good].
• How likely is a business unit to “own” the technology down the road as it gets through TRL 6-7?
• Every innovation program has a business case which is developed with the BU(s).  Alignment is validated at teach program stage.
• If innovations are not aligned with strategic vision they will not be pulled by development.

5.  Do you track sustainability impact of new initiatives?

Yes – 10 responses; Comments:  

• Using a project scorecard
• We have specific projects or platforms that fall under circular economy
• New this year
• Tracked to ensure we meet the company’s sustainability goals
• Sustainability (environmental) impact is embedded in our project portfolio management process.
• Just getting started and as the market trends teach.

No – 4 responses

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