Most Companies Are Measuring The Wrong Things. Here's Why That Kills Innovation.

You know that moment when someone says, "Innovation is this fluffy thing with post-its on the wall" and you just... internally die?

Because they're right, but also they're completely missing the point.

I recently talked to Suzanne Vos, an innovation coach at ING Labs in Singapore who spent years inside innovation teams wondering why so many initiatives that looked promising on paper just... disappeared. Quietly. Without explanation. Like they never happened.

And she realized something: The reason most innovation initiatives fail isn't because the ideas were bad or the people weren't trying hard enough. It's because nobody—and I mean nobody—had agreed on what success actually looked like.

Not in some vague, aspirational way. But in specific, measurable, observable terms.

The Problem With Vanity Metrics

Here's what usually happens. You start an innovation project. Everyone's excited. You run some experiments. You iterate. And then at some point, someone asks: "Is this working?"

And nobody can answer.

Because "working" hasn't been defined. So you start looking at metrics that feel safe. "How many ideas did we generate?" "How many meetings did we have?" "Did people like the workshops?"

These are vanity metrics. They make you feel like something is happening without actually showing you if anything is improving.

Suzanne described going into one organization where leadership kept asking her: "Are we innovating now?" And she realized the people doing the actual innovation work couldn't answer because they weren't measuring anything that mattered. They were measuring activity. Process completion. Meeting attendance.

Not progress toward actual business impact.

And here's where it gets dark: When you measure the wrong things, you optimize for the wrong things. Your team starts gaming the metrics. They run more experiments not because they'll learn more, but because more experiments look good on the dashboard. They generate more ideas not because they'll be better, but because more ideas feel like productivity.

Pretty soon, you've built a system that produces the appearance of innovation without any of the actual results.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Traditional Metrics

The worst part? Corporate finance loves traditional metrics. Profit and loss. Revenue. Return on investment. These are clean, clear, measurable things.

And they're completely useless for measuring innovation.

Here's why: An innovation initiative takes time to generate revenue. Maybe months. Maybe years. If you're measuring traditional metrics—"How much revenue did this generate this quarter?"—you'll kill almost every real innovation project before it has a chance to prove itself.

Suzanne told me about a conversation with a senior manager who was drowning in year-end reviews. She came to him excited about an innovation framework she'd built. She was sure it would help teams understand what success looked like.

He said: "That's nice and all, but how am I supposed to evaluate this? I'm already struggling to review people on targets with actual numbers. What are you asking me to do—measure their innovation? How the hell do I do that?"

And she had a moment of clarity.

The problem wasn't that teams didn't know how to innovate. The problem was that the measurement system wasn't designed to capture what innovation teams were actually doing.

The Framework That Changes Everything

What Suzanne developed—and this is important—is what she calls an innovation measurement grid. Not a new metric. Not another KPI. An actual framework that captures what innovation actually is.

It works like this: You have two axes. On one axis, you track the impact you're trying to make. "We want to reduce process time by 50 percent" or "We want to reach a new customer segment" or "We want to prove the technology is viable."

On the other axis, you track the activities required to get there. "We need to run five experiments" or "We need to interview 20 customers" or "We need to build a working prototype."

And here's the key part: You can measure progress on both of these simultaneously.

You can see: "Are we doing the right activities?" And: "Are those activities moving us toward the impact we want?"

This is not complex. It's not rocket science. But it completely reframes how you think about what's working and what isn't.

Because what it captures is something traditional metrics miss: The learning journey itself.

An innovation project isn't just about the endpoint. It's about all the experiments and insights that get you there. And most of those happen *before* you ever see revenue.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

The reason Suzanne's framework is so powerful is that it makes innovation tangible in a way that actually works in corporate environments.

She goes into teams and the same thing happens every time. Someone says: "I'd love to innovate, but it's not in my targets. It's not in my job description. It's more like a hobby right now."

And she realizes: Innovation isn't treated as work. It's treated as something extra. Something optional. Something you do if you have spare capacity.

When you measure innovation using this framework—when you define the activities and the impact and track both—it becomes work. Real work. Work you can be evaluated on. Work that connects to your role.

And suddenly people can actually do it without feeling like they're stealing time from their "real job."

But here's the uncomfortable part: This requires your leadership to commit to understanding what innovation actually is. Not just saying you believe in it. But actually showing up and asking: "Are we measuring the right things? Are we seeing the real progress? Are we removing obstacles?"

That's a lot harder than just talking about disruption in your all-hands meeting.

The Real Shift

What I heard from Suzanne that stuck with me is this: Once you stop trying to measure innovation the same way you measure execution, everything changes.

You realize that innovation is exploration. You're figuring out what's possible and what customers actually need. That's not the same as building a product on schedule and under budget. These require different metrics. Different expectations. Different timeframes.

And when you measure them differently—when you explicitly acknowledge that you're in exploration mode and track the right things for exploration—your teams can finally do the work that needs to be done instead of trying to force-fit innovation into an execution framework.

Which is like asking a piano player to follow soccer rules. It doesn't work. Not because the piano player is bad. But because the rules don't fit the game being played.

Why This Matters For Your Next Move

If you're building an innovation function in your organization, the first thing to do isn't hire people or set up a lab. It's define what success actually looks like. What are you exploring? What impact are you trying to make? What activities do you need to run to get there?

And then—this is the hard part—commit to measuring those things instead of trying to fit innovation into execution metrics.

If you're a team member who wants to innovate but doesn't know how, start with Suzanne's framework. Name the impact. Define the activities. Track both. Show your leadership that progress is happening.

Because here's the truth: Most innovation dies not because the ideas are bad, but because nobody agreed on how to know if they're working.

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Want the Full Story?

Suzanne's article "Measuring Innovation and How You Can Do It Too" is one of those rare pieces that's both philosophically sound and practically useful. She goes into detail on how to apply this framework in your specific context.

And if you want to hear her talk about why most innovation initiatives fail, what she's learned from working inside large organizations, and how she managed to get leadership to actually embrace this new way of measuring, listen to her full conversation on The School of Innovation podcast.

Because here's the thing about measuring innovation: Everyone wants it. Very few organizations are willing to measure it correctly. Which is why so many innovation initiatives feel like they're going nowhere—not because the work isn't happening, but because nobody can actually see it.

The question is: Are you going to measure it differently?