For too long now innovation has been viewed as a black art. Over the last decade, however, many organizations and their IT departments, have successfully implemented enterprise-wide as well as localized innovation programs. Along with their successes, and some pioneers' failures, we now have a more thorough understanding of what and how to measure an organization's innovation program.

Ultimately, innovation is a means to an end - a competence for generating profitable growth opportunities and improving the organization's competitiveness. A a holistic measurement system needs to have three perspectives: performance, strength of the competence, and strategic application of the competence. The performance perspectives report out the "returns" or "results" of an organization's innovation program(s) while the competence perspectives report out the ability to envision and implement innovative opportunities. The strategy perspective outlines the criticality and impact of innovation in the organization's strategic direction.

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