Measuring Venturing Activities
The NICE framework: choosing venture metrics that are Non-financial, Implementable, Contextual and Evolving.
Which venture metrics survive contact with a board that wants financial numbers years too early?
A roundtable on measuring venturing efforts made two things clear: commonly used metrics do not tell the whole venture story, and no fixed set of metrics works for every venture. Out of the discussion came the NICE framework, developed with the members who attended, for customising and tracking the success factors that actually inform decisions.
Five key insights
- 01
Commonly used metrics do not tell the entire venture story, and there is no one-size-fits-all set of metrics, even between ventures.
- 02
Non-financial: early financial metrics are mostly assumptions, and bringing ROI into the discussion too soon undermines experimentation.
- 03
Implementable: prioritise metrics that support decision-making over vanity numbers that are merely easy to collect.
- 04
Contextual: metrics must fit the venture's stage, the boldness of the innovation and the audience reading them. Early-stage ventures need qualitative signals.
- 05
Evolving: build the metric set step by step as your organisation's venturing experience grows, and revisit it regularly.
Where to start on Monday
Audit your current venture dashboard against the four NICE tests and mark which metrics actually inform decisions.
Separate venture-level metrics from portfolio-level reporting so each audience gets numbers it can act on.
Establish a baseline before promising KPIs to management, then revisit your metric set every quarter.
In members’ own words
“We aim for a holistic view to understand where we want to go, what we want to achieve in a certain amount of time and the kind of investment it would require. We think of it backwards from the investor perspective to tailor teams, KPIs, and goals.”
Portfolio Manager at Chemovator
“You first need to establish a baseline; we can't expect management in larger corporates to understand the nuances of innovation KPIs.”
Head of Venture Building at DB Schenker
Be in the room for the next one.
400+ senior innovation and growth leaders, a roundtable every month, and a recap like this one after each.
Invite-only and complimentary for senior leaders in corporate innovation and growth.