The first level of tracking projects is the activity or in-process metrics. Reporting such metrics helps teams and management track and measure their progress. When ideas are generated, they have to be selected and reviewed. Each idea will have a number of untested assumptions that have to be transformed into knowledge. Each team’s [...]
Metrics Perspectives The “Metrics Perspectives” figure illustrates one way of looking at the different perspectives that metrics must provide. An immediate insight is that one is “looking at an elephant” as the seven blind men did in the fable. The key, as the various IRI metrics committees discovered, is to use metrics in [...]
Given that CTO’s are responsible for a portfolio mixed with incremental, next- generation, and breakthrough programs, several questions are raised: Which metrics are actually in use today? How have things changed since the TVP subcommittee conducted its survey in 1997? To answer these questions, 24 IRI Board members and ROR subcommittee chairpersons were [...]
As R&D organizations moved in the late 1990s to focus on true breakthrough innovation-- not just in technology per se but also in unique business models associated with the new products and services-- models like the TVP, as comprehensive as they were, were leaving a gap. This led to formation of an IRI [...]
Technology Value Pyramid Understanding the hierarchy concept led an IRI subcommittee in the late 1990s to define and organize an elaborate set of over 200 metrics into a Technology Value Pyramid (TVP). It was one of the most complete and comprehensively laid out set of R&D metrics available. The “Technology Value Pyramid” figure [...]
By the mid-1990s, as the focus turned to filling the gap in corporate new product and service pipelines, another metrics concept emerged on the scene. From an R&D perspective it came through the Environmental Health and Safety departments where the concept of a hierarchy of metrics evolved. This concept was derived from the [...]
Activity Metrics The “Activity Metrics” figure shows some of the activity-based metrics later developed by the same group, segmented by who was affected (consequence) and what was measured (an item internal or external to the R&D organization). This advance in measurements aided new stakeholders with quality or service interests. With these metrics they [...]
Consequence Metrics vs. Time Period of Measurement The “Consequence Metrics vs.Time Period of the Measurement“ figure shows consequence- based metrics segmented by timing. It was developed by a subcommittee of the IRI’s Research-on-Research committee in the early 1990s and provides a good set of measures for incremental R&D activities aimed primarily at a [...]
As R&D executives cope with tight financial resources and demands for increasing new revenues, the pressure to measure their organizations increases. Metrics allow R&D leaders to optimize R&D’s productivity and justify to the CFO and CEO their returns on continued funding. There are actually rich sources of appropriate R&D metrics for leaders to [...]
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