The Innovation Radar is a visualization tool that displays all of a company’s innovation initiatives at a glance across dimensions such as maturity, risk, or strategic relevance. It creates transparency about where in the innovation portfolio investment is happening and where gaps exist. Without this overall view, blind spots or duplication easily arise.
In practice, a radar arranges current initiatives on concentric rings that represent maturity level: early hypotheses on the inside, market-ready projects on the outside. Sectors can represent business fields, technologies, or customer groups. A well-maintained radar shows at a glance whether the portfolio is balanced or whether all initiatives cluster in the same business field at the same maturity level. For decision-making bodies, the radar is a valuable steering instrument because it enables portfolio decisions rather than individual project evaluations.
The radar should be regularly updated and used as a living tool in governance meetings. A radar that is created once and then forgotten quickly loses its value as a basis for decisions.
