This 2006 American Management Association study “The Quest for Innovation” has an amazing amount of information and a lot of good metrics for benchmarking your organization.  Below are a few results that out found interesting:

1. Customer and competitors drive innovation:  Top two factors (Page 69).
2. Innovation strategy and plans are difficult: Lack of definition around innovation, an innovation strategy and plan are key impediments to innovation. (Page 70)
3. R&D is not the driver: Only 27% of the executives surveyed felt innovation occurred in R&D (Page 74)
4. Being good at innovation is hard: Only 15% of the executives believed their firms are good at innovation (Page 73)
5. Collaboration is key: Collaboration with external entities and effective team work second most important factor in innovation (Page 66).
6. Identifying and evaluating innovation is difficult: 46% of the companies do not have a standard process (Page 72)
7. Rewarding innovation is difficult: 26% of respondents felt innovation is not rewarded.

There is a lot more to the study (its huge).  Please check it out when you have some time.

What are some of your observations around innovation and R&D in general.  One of the companies I worked at had a great process for assessing ideas and ferret out innovation, but there was no strategy or plan to drive it further.  Funding for innovative projects kept getting cut for near term fires…