Importance of Project Benchmarking for Innovation Managers

Innovation management is the process of creating new ideas, products, and services to meet customer needs and drive business value. It involves a cyclical approach with five phases – ideation, innovation, implementation, monitoring, and control. It requires an organization to create a collaborative environment where every team member can give their best to achieve common goals. However, managing corporate innovation does not come easy for everyone. In fact, many companies struggle with it because they are unable to implement the right processes and strategies. Let’s discuss how you can use project benchmarking to improve your innovation project management.

How to Use Project Benchmarking for Innovation Management?

Set Clear Objectives & KPIs

It is always advisable to set key objectives at the onset of any project, and innovation management is no different. By setting specific goals, you can measure your progress throughout the program. It is not enough to have good intentions, you must have the right tools and a plan to achieve the results. This is where you can use benchmarking to set the right objectives and track progress by finding out what other companies are doing to drive innovation. This way, you can set benchmarks and track your progress as you work towards achieving your innovation goals. Moreover, before implementing any innovation program, you must first determine how you will measure its success. You can use benchmarking to identify what metrics are important for your organization. This way, you can tailor your innovation key performance indicators (KPIs) to your organizational goals and needs.

Leverage Your Strengths

All companies have strengths and weaknesses, but the best organizations know how to leverage their strengths to their advantage. There must be certain innovation practices or techniques that your company excels at. Utilize benchmarking to identify these strengths and see how other organizations are leveraging them in their programs. For example, organizations that excel at making breakthrough innovations may want to learn from others that specialize in incremental innovations. Use this information to build on your strengths and make them stronger.

Assess Current Innovation Capabilities

There is always room for improvement, and your innovation capabilities may not be where they need to be. You should use benchmarking to assess current innovation capabilities, identify areas of improvement, and determine what more is needed to achieve your goals. Benchmarking also allows you to identify the bottlenecks that slow down your innovation efforts. You can analyze various factors that influence innovation, such as your organization’s culture and structure, workforce, funding, and client relationships. Moreover, you can determine how other organizations overcome these challenges to improve your innovation efforts.

Ready to Try Out Project Benchmarking?

You may have implemented the right processes, but are they the best practices that drive success? This is where you can use benchmarking to access your maturity level and find out what is missing. You can also use it to identify gaps in your innovation practices and determine what your organization needs to improve. Now, you tell us — are you already using project benchmarking in your organization? What are the results? Get in touch & share your experience!