Experts, including Jim Collins, Eric Ries, Tom Peters, and Michael Schrage, have studied innovation and its process. Throughout all of their findings, a common theme emerges - experimentation. And based on that common theme, there is a way to track and measure success.
The best literature on innovation all points to the same thing: innovation is highly uncertain, and therefore the best approach is to experiment and prototype, iterating until you find the right product/market fit, and conduct this iteration with the diligence of the scientific method. The advice is so consistent, yet when we look at innovation metrics, there is rarely any kind of KPI measurements around the details of experimenting and prototyping. Let’s look at why it’s so important, and what a KPI might look like.
Measuring Experimentation
So if experimentation is so widely regarded as the basis for innovation, why do we rarely see KPIs in place to track it? After all, what gets measured, gets done, right?
In the HYPE process, this is how it can be done. Let’s assume you’re using Idea Campaigns to generate high quality ideas, which target a known problem, with a sponsor who backs (and funds) selected ideas. Ideas are rarely ready for implementation right away, they need to be developed, or combined with other ideas, and then tested.
