How do you measure “innovation?” It’s something that every organization seems to be after–just look at AT&T’s Innovation Pipeline , Sephora’s Innovation Research lab, and the University of Pennsylvania’s punny Pennovation Center –but it’s extremely hard to quantify.

The global design firm Ideo set out to answer this question by studying the company’s 26-year archive of projects that focused on clients’ internal team dynamics, as well as external sources focused on innovation (including Fast Company‘s annual Most Innovative Companies lists). Defining what innovation meant across many different companies was complex, but ultimately, Ideo found that the most important element is the organization’s ability to adapt and respond to change. In the end, Ideo identified six basic vectors that it says are instrumental to an innovative, adaptive company: Purpose, experimentation, collaboration, empowerment, looking out (i.e. staying informed about what’s happening in the industry), and refinement (the ability to successfully execute new ideas).

Each of the six vectors that drive innovation apply across any organization. Image: Ideo

Guided by these six principles, Ideo created a survey aimed at teams within larger organizations that would help team members understand how they’re performing. Called “Creative Difference,” the survey invites every member of a team to give feedback about their experiences and work. Then, Ideo provides them with a full analysis of the team’s performance through an online dashboard, including feedback on tangible ways to become more innovative (and the ability to track progress over time, if they take the survey multiple times per year). For instance, the metrics might show that a team is very purpose-driven, but lacking in collaboration; or a team might score highly on experimentation but less so on refinement.

“People think about all this stuff as intangible and mushy.”



“People think about all this stuff as intangible and mushy. The only metrics most companies have to track are performance metrics,” says David Aycan, who leads Ideo’s Creative Difference product. “Sometimes that will lag by a year or two, but we have data that shows that these behaviors lead to better performance. They can actually track that their behaviors are getting better and better.”

In essence, Creative Difference is Ideo’s attempt to quantify innovation. It’s been a year since the launch of the survey product and more than 100 companies have used Creative Difference to internally assess their teams’ aptitude for innovation. Now, Ideo has definitive data to back up its hypotheses about what behavior actually drives that elusive quality. These insights are what it discovered.

IDEO launched Creative Difference out of its San Francisco office, with the holding company Intercorp as its pilot partner, in 2015. Photo: IDEO

Don’t Get Stuck On One Idea (Or Even Three)

Aycan says that Ideo’s data revealed something surprising: neither a more traditional approach to product development–coming up with three good options, analyzing them, and choosing one to move forward with–nor the lean startup approach–taking a best guess, piloting it, and then pivoting based on what works–is the most effective way to launch a new product. Instead, when teams iterate on five or more different solutions, they are 50% more likely to launch a product successfully.

When teams iterate on five or more different solutions, they are 50% more likely to launch successfully.

“Qualitatively we’ve seen that for years and years now,” Aycan says. “As much as we’d like to say we don’t get invested in a single idea, it’s hard to acknowledge the faults in your baby when you’ve been invested for weeks or months. Get a few ideas on the table, stay flexible in terms of where the project might go.”