GuidesHow to2 min
How to measure whether the new way stuck
One outcome metric, one adoption metric, a date. Ideas and patents measure activity. Friday measures innovation.
Count the job, not the theatre. Hours returned, scrap that did not happen, people who did not go back to the old way on Friday. Ideas, patents, and workshops measure activity. Activity is allowed. Do not confuse it with a changed job.
If you need a portfolio tool to see the bets, you have too many — or you are hiding. SINLE will not average a dead bet with a live one so the slide looks like 50% success. One outcome, one adoption metric, a date. Four bets max on a page a shop can actually run.
The sequence below is the scoreboard. Would they go back? If yes, it was a demo.
A scoreboard a shop can run
Four columns, four bets maximum. Job. One outcome (hours, scrap, or cycle time). One adoption number (people who used the new way this week). Kill date. Owner. Ideas, patents, and workshops stay off the board. If you need software to see the bets, you have too many.
Ask on a later Friday: would they go back? If yes, it was a demo. Kill it in public. Fund the one they kept.
The sequence
Do these in order. Skip a line and you are back to a workshop.
- 01
Pick one outcome per bet
Hours, scrap, cycle time, paid conversions. One.
- 02
Pick one adoption metric
Weekly users of the new way. A tool with no users is a cost.
- 03
Time-box the read
Two weeks or a month. Eternal pilots are unmeasured on purpose.
- 04
Do not average bets
Kill the dead one in public. Fund the live one.
- 05
Keep inputs off the scoreboard
Patents, workshops, models trained — pair each with an outcome or the input becomes the goal.
Keep these
- Would they go back? If yes, it was a demo.
- A scorecard a shop can run: job, outcome, adoption, kill date, owner. Four bets max.
Do this before you spend
- 01Pick one outcome and one adoption number for the live bet.
- 02Put a read date on the calendar. Two weeks or a month.
- 03Drop every input metric from the scoreboard.
Pod is how a live system keeps a score after launch: 40 hours a month, $3,000, what got faster and what to kill. It starts after a scoped Invent, not instead of one.
Questions
- How do you measure R&D and innovation?
- For each live bet: the job, the unknown, the evidence that continues the work, the evidence that stops it. Then ask on a later Friday whether people kept the new way.
Next how-to
- How to de-risk R&DHow SINLE de-risks research and development: name the stuck job, run a patent search and a thin Tuesday test, write a kill rule, then spend. A bigger lab is not the method.
- How to kill a project that is not workingUse the stop rule you wrote on day one. A clean kill is a result. A zombie project is how next month disappears.
- How to stand up an R&D podDo not hire a chief of innovation first. One unknown, two or three people, a kill rule on day one, and a door into the real work.
Next
Measure the job after it ships.
Pod is $3,000 a month after Invent. Forty hours. One outcome, one adoption number, a kill date. Cancel with 30 days’ notice.