Towards innovation excellence: Why and how to measure innovation performance?

To maintain competitive advantage, today organizations need to be able to innovate - not just occasionally, but consistently. Mastering the process of innovation requires identifying the factors that support or hamper the achievement of innovations. The success of such process usually depends on the quality of the best opportunity identified, which is not enough. So, a systematic research and delivery framework spawning a set of performance measurements and improvement metrics is required, because, what is not measurable cannot be neither managed nor improved. This paper identifies three complementary components specifically developed to enable such measurement. First, Innovation Granularity Scales enabling highly targeted yet flexible performance analysis ranging from knowledge assessment to high level progressions and improvements; Second, Innovation Capability Stages referring to the minimum capabilities required by transformational milestones along the innovation continuum; Third, Innovation Maturity Levels representing the quality, predictability and performance within the innovation stages. This paper explores these complementary components and presents them as a systematic model underlying a specified innovation performance measurement framework. © 2016 IEEE.