Measuring innovation: the idea approval index
November 27th, 2007
I hate most systems of innovation I see or read about, as they fail to directly attack most of core challenges innovators face. But one idea I’m found of is the idea approval index. Here’s how it works:
How many approvals do you need to release something to a customer?
Think it through. It’s probably more than you think. Include informal or implicit approvals. Even if you’re the CEO, can you code the idea yourself? Design it? There are always people to convince or cajole.
The higher the number, the harder innovation is. The lower the number, the easier. It’s that simple. For example:
A) Joe Blogger has an idea for a way to radically improve his wordpress blog. He stays up late and codes it up. The next morning he posts it on his website. Idea Approval Index = 1. It’s just him - he thinks it, makes it, ships it.
B Fred is the engineering lead at Bozotech. He stays up late and codes it up. He shows it to another engineering lead for some feedback. They review it with the Quality assurance manager, who requests some changes, and get their designer to clean up their UI. Finally they show it to the group manager who loves it, and asks them to present it at the next feature review meeting (4 other team leads). Finally, days later, the web team agrees to get it online. Idea Approval Index (IAI) = 10 .
Counting approvals is a rough guide - it tells you how many chances there are for an idea to get killed before it makes it out the door.
Are there problems with this metric? Sure (Feel free to play devil’s advocate in the comments). But as a rough guide it’s handy. If you want more innovation and change, you want to lower the approval index. If you want more predictability and stability, raise the index. If you want both at the same time, on the same project, you’ve got a tougher problem - I’ve got answers: leave a comment if you care and I’ll post a follow-up.
It’s no surprise that the risk taking required to develop a new idea most often happens in small groups or by people working solo - their approval index is low.
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I want both at the same time. What’s the catch?
I’d also like to know. BTW, for some reason the something is weird with the supply of Art of PM on amazon.ca, it’s saying 5 to 8 weeks to ship.
Ok - it’ll be the next post!
[...] with the best will in the world it is not unusual for these internal skunk works outfits to fail. Scott Berkun’s recent post gives a good reason why; they score highly on the Idea Approval Index where the higher the number, [...]
Some easy devil’s advocacy:
- The wisdom of the approval givers weighs more heavily than the number. If I have 10 people, who are so wise that to earn their approval the idea gets better, then the value of their approval is greater than the risks of the additional hurdle.
- Some committees are made up of 11 weak sycophants, and one tyrannical egomaniac. The raw # of approvals may not be an accurate assessment of how many hurdles the idea really faces.
You’re metric is more about the difficulty of getting something done than the power to innovate (I think).
Having an original idea and making it a reality is a great achievement, one that few people realize.
However, innovating is realizing an original idea that *matters*.
All painters have an innovation metric of 1. But few are Picasso.
I’d like to know too. I live this situation on a daily basis, and will sure use any advice :).
Scott — I think you covered the concept well in Chapter 4, in The Myths of Innovation. What I got out of this chapter was that size and agility (ie. the ability to innovate) work in opposition to each other.
As a general rule, the larger a company gets, the more there is to lose, the more conservative it becomes as a result, which leads to less desire to innovate, because innovation and risk are inseparable. The objective seems to be to try and manage the risk completely out of the equation.
I just got out of a meeting where we managed to talk ourselves out of an upgrade to the *previous* version of our database software, let alone the version that’s about to come out. This is because of the ‘risks’ involved. This hardly qualifies as innovation except using the broadest possible definition. Yet we were able to go around the table enough times to find at least one veto. In a larger company, there are simply more people to say no, and therefore innovation doesn’t happen to the same degree.
There are obviously some great exceptions, but that’s the general rule, I’m afraid.
So, is there an index number at which one is clearly in Dilbertland?
Should the complexity of the idea and/or the implementation affect some determination of the “appropriate” index value?
Should some “approvals” be worth more than others? For example, I tend to weigh the opinions of the team that has to implement the code more highly than that of the guy who runs the build lab.