How to measure innovation

It's an old old problem.

I try looking at some of the less direct, or none excel spreadsheet jedi methods.

Stuff like Customer Satisfaction, Customer Retention, Employee Retention.

These are all directly related to innovation in product and service and customer relationship management and within organisations to internal communications, the quality of which is the single biggest factor in  loosing talented people. A healthy innovation strategy will be having a beneficial effect on all these.

Don't look at IP, don't look at gross profit. (Fuel prices will kill that for you, anyway)

That's my take and how I've been selling innovation internally for twenty years. It seems to work for me, you just have to tell that great story to the boss. That's the hard part . Good luck,

Just tell her that you are being innovative with the metrics.:-)