The Value of Innovation

Preface

Innovation is everywhere, in every direction we look, in every type of organization, and in almost every part of the world. Leaders are obsessed with innovation, politicians cheer innovation and desire more of it, consumers demand innovation, investors reward innovation, and media coverage of innovation is relentless.

This visibility and popularity translates into billions of dollars being pumped into all types of innovation efforts. Visibility brings out the critics who expose glitches and concerns. Lack of success and high failure rates bring out even more critics. All of this creates the need to show more results.

Innovation Meets the ROI Methodology

For almost two decades, we have had individuals involved in innovation attend an ROI Certification program which involves a week of comprehensive learning. In this process, the participants enter the program with a project in mind that they would like to evaluate at the impact and ROI level. They learn how to do conduct an ROI evaluation in this process, and they pursue the work with virtual support until they complete their project. At the end of this process, the participants obtain the designation of Certified ROI Professional (CRP). With some prompting from our international partners about ten years ago, we hosted a dedicated group of individuals who were just involved in innovation, and had them pursue the certification. We conducted sessions in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Istanbul, Turkey. In these two situations, ...