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You have determined that your company is ready to start a growth portfolio, you have included a group of products that you feel will allow your company to be innovative and have the best chance at growing profits, and you have been careful to avoid pitfalls such as rolling out too many products or hanging on to past successes and not pressing forward. So whats next? How do you measure the success of your innovation portfolio?

Tracking Your Success

There are two ways of tracking your success: quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitative measures include numbers of new customers obtained, growth as a percentage of sales from the new products or the overall ROI from an individual product. The qualitative method of measurement goes deeper than just the numbers. These measurements track how well the product was received by the target market, or by the market as a whole, how it affected the perceptions of your company, or how much effort went into effectively managing the portfolio.

In order to achieve both qualitative and quantitative results, extensive market research must be conducted after the product is launched and established in the market. Depending on when, how, and where your product was launched, you are going to receive different data from different regions. You must determine if certain technologies are more widely accepted in different regions of the country, during different times of the year, etc. Being able to properly analyze this data will allow your company to improve its growth and success during its next product launch. Successfully analyzing your previous product rollouts, whether huge successes or colossal failures, is an important step towards keeping innovation moving forward in your company.

A big part of innovation is staying on top of market trends, understanding customer needs and wants, and consistently looking to the future to grow the company, not relying on past successes to keep the company afloat. The best way to remain ahead of the curve when it comes to market innovation is understanding how to effectively gauge the success of past campaigns and applying methods that work to your future growth portfolio projects.

If you missed our last article about Delivering on Target or any of our past articles on effectively sustaining innovation in your company, you can find all of them here.

Dr. Carol Pletcher, former Chief Innovation Officer, Cargill, has been integral to the companys product innovation advancement and success. She was responsible for developing six new product lines aimed at new product planning and technology roadmapping with special emphasis on the new product development process, food safety and quality assurance. Dr. Pletcher has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of its Top 25 Innovation Champions.