Developing an innovation strategy scorecard

Abstract

Innovation as a subject is very broad and has received attention from a large number of researchers. Senior managers that see the value in formally managing innovation are not only faced with making decisions about where to start and what to focus on, but also with specific challenges that make innovation difficult to manage. These challenges include definitions of innovation that differ widely within organizations, ownership of different stages of the innovation process, cultural issues as well as lack of innovation performance measures. To assist executives under such circumstances, the aim of the research was to identify key elements of an innovation strategy as well as the appropriate performance measures that will determine the extent to which the innovation strategy is bearing fruit. This research was carried out in two stages. The first stage consisted of documentary (secondary) research, the purpose of which was to develop an innovation strategy scorecard. The scorecard was developed by firstly identifying the key components of an innovation strategy, arranging them into perspectives and thereafter developing performance measurements for each perspective. The purpose of the second stage was to validate the results obtained in stage one using feedback from a panel of experts in innovation management. At the end of the research, the key components of the innovation strategy were represented as perspectives similar to those in the Balanced Scorecard methodology. The perspectives consisted of innovation vision, innovation goals and objectives, innovation sources and resourcing, innovation metrics as well as innovation deployment. Performance measures were identified for each of these perspectives to develop the innovation strategy scorecard.