Evaluating Program Innovation

This essay has implied that there are positive, potential benefits to be derived from accurate, timely evaluations of innovation. We should also note the negative side of the same coin, the opportunity costs wasted by poor evaluation in terms of failing to terminate unwarranted projects until they become obvious. These 'costs' can be economic (cost overruns), technological (the neglect of other, more promising technologies), or political (a public skepticism regarding technology). For both the positive and negative reasons, we are thus moved to the difficult task of having to review (and possibly revise) the innovation drama while it is still in production, before the final denouement has occurred. This charter - although not easily fulfilled from an analytic perspective - and the conditions alluded to above should motivate the evaluator of the on-going innovation process with sufficient cause (some might claim urgency) to explore in greater detail some of the notions presented above.