Expert Warns: "Current State of R&D Metrics...is bad."

Product development expert and bestselling author, Wayne Mackey, thinks that while most companies have their hearts in the right place when it comes to R&D metrics, the way in which they are typically implemented and used range from marginally useful to potentially hazardous.

“10 or 15 years ago,” said Mackey, “people really started to take measurement seriously, and though I’m not sure we’ve gone backwards, we haven’t gone very far forward. [People] spend a lot of time and money collecting information, but even the people doing the work know there’s not a lot of value in it. None of the concepts behind performance measurement are wrong, but we’ve lost our way on the basics of what we’re measuring and why.” 

For example, Mackey offers the metric that a majority of companies use to determine their company’s innovation activity: “% of sales from new products.” When companies started to measure this....continued