An analysis of the return on investment in the Swiss tech industry

The return on investment (ROI), as a universal measure of a company's earning power, is fundamental to corporate controlling and external balance sheet analyses. It is used to assess profitability and the real success of a company. However, the more specialised concept of the "ROI of innovation" is less established in many companies and industries due to the fact that it is more difficult to apply.

Controlling and measuring innovation processes in general and R&D, in particular, is a major challenge for companies. However, the strategic nature of innovation as an investment in the future viability of a company and the often high R&D budgets in relation to turnover require special controlling of the R&D area as well as a way of measuring innovation processes that goes beyond traditional key figures. The reason for this is that even though many traditional key figures in the R&D area allow for benchmarking, they are merely informative in nature and are less useful for measuring the success of innovations.

In view of this situation and the problems described above, we conducted in-depth interviews with experts to analyse the extent to which the ROI of innovation is already established in the Swiss tech industry. We were particularly interested in the degree to which Swiss tech companies measure the success of innovations, what the main barriers to a high ROI are, and which key factors lead to successful innovations.