The most important and consequential corporate innovation outcomes should align with the corporate strategy.

Those repeat innovators who are able to reliably, dependably, and repeatedly produce positive results connect their outcomes to the overall corporate strategy. For publicly traded corporations top line revenues, net operating income, and market share are the most important metrics. The entire organization, in some fashion, works to influence these metrics. Orienting your innovation team with the practices that can positively influence the most consequential outcomes of the organization needs to be built into the corporate innovation governance structure. 

A new branch of corporate innovation management has introduced the concept of innovation accounting. This approach provides more depth into innovation metrics and outcomes by providing a system to track a broad range of supporting metrics. Some commonly used alternative metrics include: the number of new products created, how many ideas have been generated, and how many customers have been served. These can be viewed as tactical metrics whereas revenue, profits, and market share are the strategy.

In some cases vanity metrics are used that connect with the purpose of the organization. The current state of the market reflects a changing priority for corporates as ‘stakeholders’ are competing with ‘shareholders’ for influence. It’s yet to be determined whether vanity metrics truly influence corporate outcomes - in our experience it’s a rare exception.  

Although these alternative metrics can be informative in determining if innovation teams have been successful or not, the ultimate goal of any innovation team should be influencing revenues, profits, and market share.