Innovation Scorecard as a tool for innovation performance measurement in SME

Abstract

Purpose: The paper deals with an issue of innovation and a company’s performance in a business environment. The importance of innovation performance measurement is point out in prelude of this contribution. The purpose of this paper is to present and discus knowledge and findings of secondary and finally also original primary research into South-Moravian companies within two projects of Internal Grant Agency Faculty of Business and Management Brno University of Technology, which were conducted in 2009 and 2010. Methodology/methods: For this analysis a questionnaire survey was used – the results of the primary research reflect innovative activities from the managers’ point of view. To evaluate companies’ attitude to innovative activities and their measurement, I choose factors such as conditions for innovative activities, types of innovative activities, their evaluation, responsibility for innovation etc. as seen by managers. Also a case study of well known multinational company Whirpool about their transformation of way how they innovate is included. Scientific aim: The aim of the paper is to gain knowledge and analyze the present situation about issue of innovation performance measurement as this topic is solved in the Czech and foreign professional literature and in the Czech business environment. Findings: Author proved with help of questionnaire survey that many companies still don’t measure their innovation performance although given the importance of innovation as an engine of growth. Only very few organizations have an effective system for measuring their overall innovation performance. Conclusions: It was possible to sum up existing knowledge and approaches to innovation performance measurement by literary search and other relevant information resources. Their accomplishments and disabilities are compared in accordance with local and foreign experts’ theories. Thanks to this, new and simplifier methodology of innovation performance measurement for SME called Innovation Scorecard has been described. This methodology is based on well known system Balanced Scorecard. Unfortunately, implementation of BSC is timely and financially too challenging for our SME. Therefore some basic elements and approaches to performance measurement were used for Innovation Scorecard.