Modern management loves metrics, KPIs, performance dashboards, innovation targets, quarterly reports, other management terms.
But innovation does not always behave well under measurement.
When companies start measuring the number of ideas generated, employees generate more ideas, not necessarily better ones. When innovation is tied to short-term financial returns, long-term experimentation disappears.
The hidden cost of over-measurement is that people begin optimizing for what is measured, not for what truly matters.
True innovation often begins as uncertainty. It may not generate immediate revenue, and it may even look inefficient at first. If every project must justify itself through short-term KPIs, radical innovation becomes unlikely.
This does not mean we should abandon measurement, but that we should measure learning, adaptability, and experimentation, and not just the output.