Part of the problem with innovating is that it is hard to measure your success. Many groups will work for a long time struggling to develop new ideas, refine them, and measure their likely success. For a long time, the team may feel as though it has not accomplished anything tangible. Indeed, from the standpoint of finished products, it is often difficult to tell the difference between a group that is appropriately focused on Innovation and one that is just loafing.
That is why it can be hard to track the progress of Innovation teams.
Rather than trying to measure the success of innovative outcomes, though, it is crucial to focus instead on whether the process being engaged. If teams working on innovation are doing the right kinds of activities, then it is important to trust that results will follow.
Innovation teams are trying to do something that has not been done before. That typically requires drawing knowledge from one area of expertise to another. In order for innovators to do that successfully, they must be expanding their base of knowledge continuously.
That means that it is important to evaluate teams on what new knowledge they are acquiring. How many articles from scientific journals have they read? How many books have they explored? How often have they engaged in conversations with other members of the company or outside subject matter experts to learn new things?
It is also important for the group's learning to be focused both on what is known about the problem being solved as well as on other areas that are not obviously related to the problem on the surface. Many innovative problems are solved by analogy, and so it is not always obvious where the key insight is going to come from.
In this vein, it is valuable to make sure that the group members diverge in their expertise. The more different branches of knowledge that team members develop, the more likely they are to find valuable nuggets that can provide new perspective on the problem.
Groups that continue to learn continue to be inspired by the new things they encounter.
Studies of creativity make clear that quantity and quality are highly related in creative pursuits. The groups that come up with the best ideas tend to come up with the most ideas.
