Innovation Performance Diagnostic
Is Your Innovation Engine Creating Value – or Just Burning Money?
Find out exactly what’s suppressing your innovation performance; and get an executive-ready roadmap to fix it – in 30 days.
The Critical Question Every Leadership Team Is Afraid to Ask
How much has your company invested in new products over the last five years – and how much of that investment has returned meaningful revenue and profit?
For many businesses, the honest answer is uncomfortable. R&D budgets are spent. Projects are launched. Teams work hard. And yet:
This is not a people problem. It is a system problem. And until the system is diagnosed accurately, no amount of talent, budget, or strategic intent will fix it. |
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Introducing the Innovation Performance Diagnostic
A 30-day, evidence-based diagnostic designed for executive leadership teams to find out what is blocking innovation performance – and how to fix it.
The SGI Innovation Performance Diagnostic combines three lenses – a best practice benchmarking survey, key stakeholder interviews and a thorough documentation/systems review – to pinpoint the systemic barriers suppressing your innovation results. All backed by Stage-Gate International’s 40 years of applied expertise and globally recognized research.
In 30 days, you will get:
1. A quantified view of how your innovation system is performing versus best-in-class benchmarks.
2. A clear picture of the highest-priority issues holding back results, and the specific actions needed to fix them.
3. A prioritized roadmap to build the capabilities needed to increase innovation revenue & EBITDA and accelerate time-to-market.
The Four-Step Process
Step 1 – Benchmarker™ Online Survey
Find out your strengths and weaknesses in proven best practices, in your own voice.
Our proprietary Benchmarker™ survey is completed by your innovation participants across organizational levels, functions, geographies, and business units.
It assesses your current performance in 95 best practices across four proven drivers of innovation performance: Product & Technology Strategy, Portfolio Governance, People, and Stage-Gate process. Your responses are benchmarked against industry best practice – so you can see where you stand (below average, above average, or top 20%) and the disconnects between the different groups of innovation participants.
Step 2 – Documentation & Systems Review
See what your current innovation system actually produces in practice.
We conduct a thorough review of your existing documentation and enabling software information to understand current practice, including:
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NPD processes and guidelines for project teams
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Portfolio documentation showing portfolio mix, metrics, financials, resources and prioritization methods
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Project deliverables showing the information actually captured by project teams in each Project Stage.
- Software and AI tools used to support project teams, resource managers and portfolio decision makers
This is where we find the gap between intent and reality – between the innovation system you think you have and the one actually being used.
Step 3 – Executive Stakeholder Interviews
The most important information comes from the people who live inside the system.
We conduct structured, one-hour interviews (in-person or virtual) with your key leaders across functions, including: your executive leadership team, portfolio managers, product/segment managers and project leaders.
These confidential conversations are designed to surface the unspoken truths that survey data cannot capture: the cultural barriers, governance dynamics, historical successes & failures that shaped today’s habits, and the leadership aspirations for innovation business impact over the next 5 years.
Step 4 – Executive Diagnostic Readout & Roadmap
Align leadership on the innovation system you have – and the one you need.
We synthesize all findings into a single, executive-grade readout delivered to your leadership team. In a two-hour working session, we present:
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1. Benchmarker™ Scorecard A visual scorecard showing how your organization rates its innovation practices (below average, above average, or top 20%) against industry benchmarks. Results are segmented by organizational level (Executive, Manager, Team Member) and Function (Marketing, R&D, Engineering, Operations etc) to provide further insight. Executives discover, for the first time, how the organization rates its current practices against industry benchmarks – and the disconnects between different functions and levels. |
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2. Prioritized Systemic Issues Summarizes the major issues holding back your performance and the financial cost of not addressing them. All backed by solid evidence from the survey, interviews and document reviews. Executives see why change is needed now, and what strengths to build on. |
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3. Prioritized Actions Specific changes to Strategy, Portfolio Governance, People, and Stage-Gate process capabilities, based on the Stage‑Gate® Innovation Performance Framework and 40 years of research. Executives reach alignment on what changes must take place to drive innovation results. |
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4. Delivery Roadmap A pragmatic, time-bound roadmap that shows workstreams, owners, and investment required to unlock your innovation throughput and ROI. Executives agree on the plan of action, timeline and commitments needed to implement capabilities to deliver better financial results. |
Who This Is For
The Innovation Performance Diagnostic is designed for mid to large B2B and B2C business units or entire corporations with multiple divisions and innovation portfolios, who recognize that:
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Their current approach to innovation will not deliver the required revenue & EBITDA growth targets.
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Previous capability improvements have failed, due to poor implementation or lack of buy-in.
- They need an independent, credible external perspective to build executive alignment for change.
- Market, technology & industry disruption threatens their historic strengths to sustain and grow market share.
- They are ready to stop debating innovation priorities — and start executing a funded, leadership-aligned improvement plan.
The Cost of WaitingFor a business investing millions annually in new product development, poor portfolio governance and process execution typically destroy 20–40% of expected ROI — through investment in the wrong projects, late launches, missed financial targets, and products that fail to gain market share. The Diagnostic takes 30 days. The cost of another year without it: millions in lost revenue and EBITDA – and ground ceded to faster-moving competitors. |
Why Stage-Gate® International, & No One Else
This is the question we encourage you to ask any innovation consulting firm. The answer matters.
We Wrote the Playbook. Literally.
Stage-Gate® International was founded by Dr. Robert G. Cooper and Dr. Scott J. Edgett — the researchers and practitioners who created the Stage-Gate® Innovation Performance Framework, the most widely adopted and independently validated new product development methodology in the world.
No other firm owns this intellectual property. No other firm has the rights or the know-how to apply these methods correctly. Firms that teach Stage-Gate are teaching our framework. We are the authentic experts.
Our four definitive books on the practices of innovation – Product Innovation and Technology Strategy, Portfolio Management for New Products, Product Leadership, and Winning at New Products – form the basis of our comprehensive Innovation Performance Framework adopted by leading innovative companies across industries, cultures and countries worldwide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is an innovation performance diagnostic and why do I need one?
An innovation performance diagnostic is a structured assessment of your company’s ability to develop and commercialize new products profitably. It identifies the specific systemic failures – in strategy alignment, portfolio governance, organization, culture and product development process – that are causing your new product investments to underperform. You need a diagnostic if your new products and services are consistently missing revenue or profit targets, launching late, or failing to reach the commercial scale and market share you targeted.
Q: How is Stage-Gate International’s diagnostic different from a general management consulting engagement?
SGI’s diagnostic is built on the Stage-Gate® Innovation Performance Framework – the only independently benchmarked innovation framework in the world, validated by the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) against thousands of companies. We are not generalist management consultants applying generic frameworks. We are the creators and intellectual property owners of the methodology that over half of all product-developing companies worldwide use. No other firm has access to our proprietary Benchmarker™ survey instrument, our benchmarking database, or our 40 years of applied research on what actually drives new product success.
Q: How long does the diagnostic take?
The full four-step diagnostic – Benchmarker™ survey, documentation review, executive interviews, and roadmap presentation – is designed to be completed within 30 days.
Q: What does the diagnostic cost relative to what we’re spending on R&D?
The diagnostic investment is typically a fraction of one failed product launch. For companies investing more than $5M annually in new product development and generating below-industry returns, the ROI of correctly diagnosing the system before investing further is significant. Contact us to discuss investment options tailored for your company.
Q: Do we need to have a Stage-Gate process already in place?
No. The diagnostic is equally valuable whether your company has a formal NPD process that is not performing, an informal process that varies by division, or no structured process at all. We assess where you are, not where you should have been.
Q: Can the diagnostic address family-owned governance dynamics and shareholder alignment?
Yes. Some of the most critical findings in our diagnostics relate to governance structure — specifically the misalignment between shareholder risk appetite, leadership growth ambition, and innovation investment levels. Our executive interviews are designed to surface these dynamics explicitly, and our roadmap directly addresses how to build a governance model that aligns all stakeholders around a shared innovation investment thesis.
Q: What happens after the diagnostic?
The diagnostic concludes with a performance improvement roadmap specifically designed for your company. You may choose to execute this roadmap yourself, or partner with us to design, implement and automate your bespoke innovation performance framework to reliably and quickly deliver NPD revenue and EBITDA gains. You are under no obligation to proceed with us, but in our experience, leadership teams that complete the diagnostic rarely choose not to act on it.
Q: What industries do you serve?
Stage-Gate International serves organizations across multiple B2B and B2C industries and government entities around the world, wherever product or service innovation is critical to achieving their strategic objectives. Our framework and diagnostic methodology are sector-agnostic – but our consultants bring deep sector experience so that findings are grounded in your specific competitive context.