Well, here we go again. The latest iteration of the “is R&D adding value” discussion/analysis that has been happening ever since Vannevar Bush’s historic 1945 report, Science the Endless Frontier. It’s as if the authors have never heard of the numerous discussions or seen the extensive research on exactly this topic that have been occurring ever since. One wonders what companies they talked to and what research they’ve read. General Electric was using these metrics to assess the effectiveness of their R&D efforts back in the 1970’s. The Industrial Research Institute (renamed the Innovation Research Interchange) has had numerous Research-on-Research (RoR) projects addressing these issues, metrics, best practices etc. for decades and yes, they are used, along with numerous other, more modern and effective metrics and tools to gauge innovation effectiveness.
There are many better alternatives for learning about effective innovation metrics than this article. The IRI mentioned above is one. The work published by Innovation Leader is another.