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Hey there, innovation champions!
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I recently found myself reflecting on a challenge I see across the tech world: we're trying to measure 21st-century innovation with 20th-century metrics.
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Innovation leaders often face the same frustrating question: "But how is this impacting our bottom line?"
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It's a fair question, but traditional financial metrics like ROI, revenue growth, and cost savings tell only a fraction of the innovation story. They're like trying to judge an iceberg by the 10% you can see above water.
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Today, I want to share some "below the waterline" metrics that tell a more complete story about innovation efforts - metrics that can transform how you understand, communicate, and accelerate innovation in your organization.
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The Invisible Value of Innovation

When I talk with leaders about what they're really trying to achieve through innovation, their answers rarely start with financial outcomes.
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Instead, I hear things like:

• "We want to stay relevant in a rapidly changing market"
• "We need to attract and retain top talent"
• "We want to build capabilities that future-proof our organization"
• "We're trying to foster a culture where people are energized and engaged"
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These goals are crucial for long-term success, yet they don't show up neatly on quarterly financial statements.

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Let's look at some alternative ways to measure innovation that capture this fuller picture of value, using my Create the Impossible™ framework as a guide.
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Learning Velocity: The Speed of Knowledge Creation

The first element of my Create the Impossible™ framework is "Play Hard" - creating space for experimentation and discovery. But how do you measure the value of play?

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One powerful metric is what I call "learning velocity" - the speed at which your team is generating new insights.

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This isn't about how many experiments you run, but about the rate at which you're increasing your understanding of your customers, your market, and your capabilities.
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Here's how to measure it:

1. Knowledge Assets: Track the creation of new insights, tools, or approaches. These might be documented in playbooks, design patterns, or capability models.
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2. Learning Reviews: After each project or sprint, document what the team learned. Over time, you can track how quickly your knowledge base is growing.
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3. Question Evolution: Notice how the questions your team is asking evolve over time. Are they becoming more sophisticated? Are you asking questions today that you couldn't have formulated six months ago?
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Relationship Resilience: The Strength of Your Connection Web

The second element in my framework is "Make Crap" - creating psychological safety for people to share imperfect work. This builds what I call "relationship resilience" - the strength of the human connections that enable innovation.
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Here's how you might measure it:

1. Psychological Safety Metrics: Regular surveys assessing whether team members feel safe taking risks, sharing incomplete ideas, and making mistakes.
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2. Collaboration Networks: Using network analysis to map who's working with whom across organizational boundaries. Are connections growing stronger and more diverse over time?
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3. Idea Transparency: Track how early in the development process ideas are shared. Earlier sharing indicates greater trust and potentially more diverse input.
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Research consistently shows that teams with high psychological safety and diverse collaboration patterns tend to be more innovative. When people feel safe to share early-stage ideas and work across boundaries, breakthrough thinking becomes more likely.
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Adaptation Capacity: Your Organization's Flexibility

The third element of my framework, "Learn Fast," is about building your organization's capacity to adapt. This might be the most valuable outcome of innovation work, yet it's often completely unmeasured.
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Here's how to capture it:

1. Response Time: How quickly can your organization react to external changes? This might be measured by the time it takes to formulate a response to a competitor move or market shift.
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2. Experiment Cycle Time: How long does it take from identifying a need to running an experiment? How much has this time decreased?
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3. Pivot Capability: How effectively can teams change direction based on new information? Track instances where teams successfully adapted their approach based on feedback or changing conditions.
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Organizations with high adaptation capacity can respond more quickly to threats and opportunities - a critical advantage in today's rapidly changing environment.

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The Ripple Effect: Innovation's Broader Impact

Beyond these metrics that map to my Create the Impossible™ framework, there's another set of measurements that capture innovation's ripple effects throughout an organization:

1. Talent Magnetism: Are you attracting and retaining creative talent? Tracking application rates for innovation-focused roles and retention rates of team members can reveal how your innovation culture strengthens your talent position.
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2. Decision Quality: Are you making better decisions faster? Innovation capabilities often improve an organization's overall decision-making.
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3. Strategic Optionality: Has innovation increased your future options? Innovation often creates new strategic possibilities that weren't previously available. Tracking your "option space" - the range of possible future moves - can quantify this value.
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Putting It Into Practice: The Innovation Dashboard 2.0

So how do you actually implement these alternative metrics in your organization? Here's a practical approach:

1. Start with Purpose: Before choosing metrics, clarify what you're really trying to achieve through innovation. Is it adaptability? Future-proofing? Cultural transformation? Then select metrics that align with these deeper purposes.
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2. Balance Leading and Lagging Indicators: Traditional financial metrics are lagging indicators - they tell you about past performance. The metrics I've described are leading indicators - they predict future success.
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3. Create a Multi-Dimensional Dashboard: Develop a dashboard that shows traditional metrics alongside these alternative measures, telling a more complete story of innovation's value.
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4. Visualize the Connections: Help stakeholders see how these alternative metrics connect to financial outcomes over time. For example, show how increased learning velocity eventually translates to faster product development.
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Your Innovation Measurement Challenge

So here's your challenge for this week: Identify one "below the waterline" metric that would help tell a more complete story about the value your innovation efforts are creating.

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Maybe it's a measure of learning velocity. Perhaps it's something that captures your growing relationship resilience. Or it could be an indicator of your organization's adaptation capacity.
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Whatever you choose, start tracking it alongside your traditional metrics. You might be surprised at the insights it reveals and the conversations it sparks.

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Remember: What we measure shapes what we value and what we achieve. By expanding our innovation metrics beyond the bottom line, we open up new possibilities for creating the impossible.
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Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible!

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I'd love to hear from you. What's one alternative metric you're using to measure innovation in your organization? Hit reply and share your approach!

Senior Leaders: Ready to transform how your organization measures and communicates innovation value? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let's explore how to create a more complete picture of your innovation impact.

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🎙️ Double Feature: Two Fresh Podcast Conversations!

Want to unlock more creativity in your work?
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I recently sat down with Bessi Graham for The Jasper Blueprint podcast to talk about the power of PLAY in business innovation. Turns out, play isn’t just for kids—it’s a game-changer for leaders and teams who need to think outside the box.
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We covered:
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🎭 Why play is essential, not optional, for breakthrough ideas
🛠️ My Create the Impossible™ framework for turning big ideas into reality
💡 How leaders can use communication and curiosity to drive innovation

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If you’re looking for fresh ways to energize your work, I’d love for you to tune in.
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🎧 Listen & watch here
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Let me know what resonates with you! Reply to this email—I’d love to hear your thoughts. 🎙️✨

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🎧 Break Through Creative Blocks with Play!​
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What if unlocking your best creative work wasn’t about more discipline—but more play?
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I recently sat down with Kevin Chung on The Standout Creatives podcast to talk about how play, improvisation, and creative exploration can help you overcome perfectionism, spark innovation, and build a sustainable creative practice.

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✅ Why perfectionism is a trap—and what to do instead
✅ How to introduce more creativity into your daily work
✅ A simple mindset shift to overcome creative blocks
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If you’ve ever felt stuck staring at a blank page, this episode is for you. Listen here: Click to tune in! 🎙️

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Today I’m sharing a snapshot of my latest doodle next to my cat, Jack Jack, who was cuddled up with me while I made it.
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Honestly, I’m not crazy about this doodle. I’m not pleased with the outcome.
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But I’m sharing it anyway.
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Why?
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Because not every project is going to come out great, and that’s not only okay, it’s actually part of the creative process, and essential to innovation!
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If you’re leading a team that needs to innovate, this mindset shift is crucial. Innovation requires experimentation, and experimentation means allowing space for “failures” that actually become stepping stones to breakthrough ideas.
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Remember: we need the crap to fertilize the good stuff.
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That’s why it’s so important to “Think process, not product,” as I say in my book, The Creative Sandbox Way™ (that’s guidepost number two).
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And why my Create the Impossible™ framework calls for us to Play Hard, Make Crap, and Learn Fast!
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Is your team stuck in perfectionism? Are brilliant ideas dying before they have a chance to develop? Let’s change that.
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👉 Book your complimentary Innovation Strategy Session today and discover how to cultivate a culture where creativity thrives.Ready to explore how strategic creativity can transform your innovation process?

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That's it for this week!
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Creatively yours,
Melissa

​P.S. When you’re ready to build a culture of thriving innovation, so your team can Create the Impossible™, here are three ways I can help:

1) Download my FREE Innovation Culture Assessment to evaluate where your team stands

2) Download the first 50 pages of my book, The Creative Sandbox Way™, to reconnect with your creativity

3) Click here to schedule a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session

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