How to Measure and Improve Your Innovation Performance with Dashboard and Reports10 min read

Innovation management is the process of developing, implementing and evaluating new ideas that create value for an organization. Innovation management can help organizations achieve their strategic goals, improve their performance, and gain a competitive edge in the market.

However, innovation management is not a simple task. It requires a systematic approach, a clear vision, and a culture of creativity and collaboration. One of the key challenges of innovation management is to measure and monitor the progress and impact of innovation initiatives. How can you know if your innovation efforts are paying off? How can you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your innovation process? How can you communicate your innovation results to your stakeholders?

This is where innovation management dashboard and reports come in handy. A dashboard is a visual tool that displays the most important information about your innovation activities in a single screen. A report is a document that provides more detailed and comprehensive information about your innovation outcomes and insights. Both dashboard and reports can help you track, analyze and improve your innovation performance.

But how do you create effective dashboard and reports for innovation management? What are the best practices and common pitfalls to avoid? In this article, we will share some dos and don’ts for creating dashboard and reports that can help you manage your innovation projects more efficiently and effectively.

One of the best ways to answer these questions is to use a dashboard and reports system that can help you monitor, analyze and optimize your innovation process. A dashboard and reports system can provide you with:

• A clear overview of your innovation goals, activities, outcomes and impact
• A way to measure and compare your innovation performance against your targets and benchmarks
• A tool to identify and address the gaps and challenges in your innovation process
• A source of insights and feedback to improve your innovation strategy and execution
• A means to showcase and celebrate your innovation achievements and learnings

But how do you create a dashboard and reports system that works for your organization? What are the best practices and tips to follow? What are the common pitfalls and mistakes to avoid?

In this article, we will guide you through the steps and best practices to create a dashboard and reports system that can help you measure and improve your innovation performance. We will also introduce you to Accept Mission, a powerful innovation management platform that can help you create, manage and share your dashboard and reports with ease.

What is a Dashboard and Reports System?

A dashboard and reports system is a set of tools that can help you collect, organize, visualize and communicate your innovation data. A dashboard and reports system typically consists of:

• A dashboard: a visual display that shows the most important information about your innovation performance at a glance. A dashboard can include metrics, indicators, charts, graphs, tables, maps, etc. that can help you monitor your progress, spot trends, identify issues and opportunities, etc.
• A report: a document that provides more detailed information about your innovation performance. A report can include text, images, tables, charts, graphs, etc. that can help you explain your results, share your learnings, provide recommendations, etc.

A dashboard and reports system can help you answer questions such as:

• What are our innovation goals and how are we performing against them?
• What are the key drivers and outcomes of our innovation process?
• How are we doing compared to our peers or competitors?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of our innovation process?
• What are the best practices and lessons learned from our innovation projects?
• How can we improve our innovation process and results?
• How can we communicate our innovation value proposition and impact to our stakeholders?

Why Do You Need a Dashboard and Reports System?

A dashboard and reports system can provide you with many benefits for your innovation process. Some of the main benefits are:

• Alignment: a dashboard and reports system can help you align your innovation efforts with your strategic objectives and priorities. By defining and tracking your innovation goals, metrics and indicators, you can ensure that your innovation activities are aligned with your vision, mission, values and strategy.
• Accountability: a dashboard and reports system can help you hold yourself and others accountable for your innovation performance. By measuring and reporting your innovation results, you can demonstrate your progress, achievements and impact to your stakeholders. You can also use your dashboard and reports to reward and recognize your innovators for their contributions.
• Improvement: a dashboard and reports system can help you improve your innovation process

Do: Define your innovation goals and metrics

Before you start creating your dashboard and reports, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your innovation projects and how you will measure your success. You need to define your innovation goals and align them with your organizational strategy. You also need to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you track your progress towards your goals.

Some examples of innovation goals are:

• Increase the number of new ideas generated
• Improve the quality and feasibility of ideas
• Accelerate the time to market of new products or services
• Enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Reduce costs and increase revenues

Some examples of innovation KPIs are:

• Number of ideas submitted, screened, selected, developed, tested, implemented
• Percentage of ideas that meet the criteria of desirability, feasibility, viability
• Time spent on each stage of the innovation process
• Customer feedback and ratings on new products or services
• Cost savings and revenue generated by new products or services

Don’t: Use too many or irrelevant metrics

While it is important to measure your innovation performance, it is also important to avoid using too many or irrelevant metrics that can clutter your dashboard and reports. Using too many metrics can make it difficult to focus on the most important ones and can cause confusion and overload for your audience. Using irrelevant metrics can distract you from your main goals and can mislead you into making wrong decisions.

To avoid this, you should follow the SMART criteria for choosing your metrics. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Your metrics should be:

• Specific: They should clearly define what you want to measure and why
• Measurable: They should be quantifiable and verifiable with data
• Achievable: They should be realistic and attainable within your resources and constraints
• Relevant: They should be aligned with your goals and strategy
• Time-bound: They should have a defined timeframe for measurement and evaluation

Do: Use a balanced mix of qualitative and quantitative data

Another best practice for creating dashboard and reports is to use a balanced mix of qualitative and quantitative data. Quantitative data are numerical values that can be measured objectively and statistically. Qualitative data are descriptive values that can capture subjective opinions, feelings, experiences, and stories.

Both types of data are valuable for innovation management because they can provide different perspectives and insights into your innovation process and outcomes. Quantitative data can help you measure the efficiency, effectiveness, and impact of your innovation activities. Qualitative data can help you understand the needs, preferences, motivations, and challenges of your customers, employees, partners, and other stakeholders.

Some examples of quantitative data sources are:

• Surveys
• Analytics
• Experiments
• Tests

Some examples of qualitative data sources are:

• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Observations
• Stories

Don’t: Ignore the context and interpretation of data

While data can provide useful information for innovation management, they are not enough by themselves. Data need to be interpreted in the context of your goals, strategy, environment, competitors, customers, etc. Data also need to be presented in a clear, concise, and compelling way that can communicate your message effectively to your audience.

To do this, you should use data visualization techniques such as charts, graphs, tables, maps, icons, etc. that can help you display your data in an easy-to-understand format. You should also use storytelling techniques such as headlines, captions, summaries, highlights, etc. that can help you explain the meaning and significance of your data.

However, you should be careful not to manipulate or misrepresent your data to fit your narrative or agenda. You should be honest and transparent about your data sources, methods, assumptions, limitations, and uncertainties. You should also be open to feedback and criticism from your audience and be ready to adjust your data and conclusions accordingly.

Do: Use a tool that can help you create dashboard and reports easily and efficiently

Creating dashboard and reports for innovation management can be a time-consuming and complex task. You need to collect, analyze, and visualize data from various sources and formats. You also need to update and share your dashboard and reports regularly with your stakeholders.

To make this task easier and more efficient, you can use a tool that can help you create dashboard and reports automatically and dynamically. One such tool is Accept Mission, a powerful innovation management platform that can help you manage your innovation projects from idea to implementation.

With Accept Mission, you can:

Accept Mission is a idea and innovation management software. As innovation team you can make use of many tools to Run successful innovation campaigns, idea management with funnels and automation, score and select the best ideas, follow and boost your innovation portfolio, build awesome reports and dashboards.

• Generate, collect, and evaluate ideas from your employees, customers, partners, etc.
• Manage your ideas in funnels, stage-gate, workflow and automation.
• Manage your innovation projects with agile methodologies and tools
• Track and measure your innovation performance with real-time dashboard and reports
• Share and collaborate on your dashboard and reports with your team and stakeholders
• Learn and improve your innovation skills and capabilities with gamification and training

Example reports and dashboards in Accept Mission:

• Innovation Dashboard
• Report per campaign/challange (Mission) about performance, top ideas top users etc.
• Report per Funnel about performance, top ideas top users, days in stages, velocity, etc.
• Report per Idea generation tool boards.
• Trends analysis
• People skills
• Smart word clouds
• 3D bubble graphs based on tags / categories
• 3D graph for impact / investment analysis.
• And many more reports

Don’t: Forget to act on your dashboard and reports

Finally, the most important thing to remember is that dashboard and reports are not the end goal of innovation management. They are only means to an end. The ultimate goal of innovation management is to create value for your organization and your customers.

Therefore, you should not forget to act on your dashboard and reports. You should use them as a guide to make informed decisions, take actions, and implement changes that can improve your innovation process and outcomes. You should also use them as a feedback loop to monitor the results of your actions, learn from your successes and failures, and iterate on your ideas and solutions.

By following these dos and don’ts, you can create dashboard and reports that can help you manage your innovation projects more effectively and efficiently. You can also create more value for your organization and your customers with your innovative products or services.

DO: Start a trial or book a demo

If you want to learn more about how Accept Mission can help you create dashboard and reports for innovation management, you can start a trial or book a demo today.