The disconnect between how innovation teams measure progress and how the executive team measures value is one of the most common reasons good projects fail to scale.
As McKinsey's Erik Roth pointed out in an episode of the Inside The Strategy Room podcast, “Too often we see the debate around innovation R&D portfolios resting on how much gets invested against each project and budget cycles as opposed to what kind of a return is going to be generated by those investments.”
Most innovation teams are measured by things like idea generation, conversion rates, opportunity pipeline, or internal traction. However, the C-suite usually wants numbers that map to commercial outcomes: growth, revenue, margin, cost.
This is the innovation metrics gap that kills buy-in.
Unless you are able to connect the dots between innovation and business impact, they won’t see the value and your project probably won't get the support it needs to go anywhere, no matter how much you believe in it or what progress you’ve made.
In this article, we explore the disconnect that often exists between innovation teams and executive teams in terms of metrics, and how to fix it.
What success means to innovation teams
For innovation teams, success often looks like idea generation rate, innovation pipeline, internal adoption, or projects that progress to pilot phases. To your team, these metrics are incredibly meaningful, demonstrating your progress, and helping you to make informed decisions.
For example, consider a food manufacturing company trialing a new sustainable packaging option for a confectionery item. As an innovation team, your success metrics might be how quickly sustainable packaging concepts can be developed, positive consumer feedback, or whether the packaging can maintain freshness and ensure the shelf-life of the confectionary.
While all are signs you’re making headway as an innovation team, they're rarely the sort of metrics that will get your CFO excited.
What success looks like in the boardroom
Conversely, in boardrooms, the discussion is rarely around market research cycles or pilot projects, but focused heavily on revenue, profit margin, market share, or costs. For your leadership team, success is measured by commercial outcomes and it is important that innovation teams can demonstrate how their initiatives can feed into company-wide goals.
If we go back to the packaging example: leadership doesn’t just want to know that a new eco-friendly, compostable wrapper passed testing. They want to know if switching to it will help build partnerships with retailers or win over sustainability-focused customers in a new market.
Leaders thrive on forecasts, budgets, and evidence that the business case for innovation stacks up. So while your team may be focused on “Can we do this?”, the board is asking “What is the business impact if we do?”
The cost of the innovation metrics disconnect
This mismatch can have serious consequences. When innovation metrics don’t relate to overall business goals or metrics, projects will quickly lose credibility.
Good ideas and prime opportunities will be held up or missed entirely because they don't look good enough on paper in the boardroom. When innovation projects stall or never get the green light, your business loses out on chances to grow, stand out in the market, or operate more efficiently.
Over time, this disconnect will eventually shape how innovation is perceived across your business. If leadership isn’t getting the commercial information it needs to invest in projects, innovation will eventually be seen as just an expensive experiment. As a result, support for projects will fade.
For innovation teams, this also creates a false sense of failure. You can be hitting your goals as a team, validating ideas, and improving processes but unless those achievements are translated into metrics that leadership recognizes, they simply won’t get funded.
Importantly, either side must not blame the other. Remember that innovation teams and executive boards operate with completely different pressures. One is focused on experimentation and learning; the other is judged on revenue and quarter-on-quarter performance.
But, this disconnect is surprisingly common, and entirely possible to fix.
How to keep both sides happy
Thankfully, it’s not a case of abandoning the innovation metrics that matter to your team, but reframing them in a way that resonates with leadership. You’ve already gathered the data, tracked the right opportunities, and measured project progress in ways that are meaningful to your success as an innovation team.
Now, your job is to think, “What would my CEO care most about?” or “If I were my CFO, what would I need to hear?” and start from there.
Speaking the C-suite’s language is simply a case of presenting the facts and figures that your board cares about. Does your work reduce risk, open up growth opportunities, or cut costs over time? What impact does this have on gross profit or customer acquisition?
Explain how this project ties directly into the business strategy and how it can affect the bottom line, whether that’s through cost reduction, increased speed to market, or strengthening the company’s competitive position.
If you're testing a new AI-powered customer support tool, your team might be focused on training data quality or user experience in early beta trials. But when you're speaking to leadership, shift the conversation to what they care about: reducing support costs, shortening response times, and improving customer satisfaction scores.
Talk about how this work could cut support costs by 30%, reduce wait times by half, or increase customer loyalty over the next 12 months. You’re not replacing your metrics but simply realigning them to make your case in a way your leadership team is wired to understand.
Which metrics should you show the board, and which to leave out
So which metrics should you actually present to the board and which are better left out?
Let’s start with the things to leave out. Detailed innovation metrics like idea validation rate, kill rates, and employee innovation mix might matter to your team but they tend to fall flat with senior leaders as they lack relevance to the headline figures that matter to them.
Here are some examples:
- Number of workshops or brainstorming sessions held
- Total hours spent by employees on innovation projects
- Number of new ideas submitted to the idea funnel
- Percentage of staff time allocated to innovation
- Number of new products launched (without market or financial results)
- Innovation climate or employee engagement scores (as standalone metrics)
While that doesn’t mean that these metrics aren’t valuable (because they absolutely are!), when you’re speaking to the board, zoom out a little and reframe the numbers that drive your team into business outcomes that drive the C-suite.
So what metrics should be front and centre?
Start by aligning yourself with your company’s strategy. If your company is aiming to break into new markets, talk about how this project can support that. Maybe it gives you access to a new demographic or helps to solve a key regulatory challenge in a different country. If the priority is reducing cost, share figures that show how and where this project could drive efficiencies or reduce costs over time.
Return on investment (ROI) still matters, but for many innovation projects, it can be difficult to calculate in cash terms, especially in early-stage projects. When you're still shaping ideas or piloting new tools, traditional business metrics like profit and revenue often don’t apply yet.
Instead, focus on metrics that reflect progress. Early-stage innovation might not generate revenue straight away, but it can still lay the foundation for business success.You might be building products or services your business didn’t have before, creating faster routes to market, or trialing something that changes a department’s entire approach.
Here are a few examples:
- Number of patents filed or granted
- Percentage of existing customers upgrading to next-generation products
- Market share growth in target segments
- Client satisfaction with new products
- Innovation velocity (time to market)
- Cost or time savings
Over time, and as projects progress, introduce more commercial metrics such as the size of the opportunity if a pilot goes live, potential cost savings, or the risk you're helping the business avoid. Is this initiative likely to cut operational costs over time? Will it improve customer retention or speed up delivery times?
Your metrics should build a compelling case for buy-in that shows how your work supports long-term growth and strategic priorities.
