8) How do you measure success?

Being an
information technology framework, REALNEO may measure success in relatively
unlimited administrator/developer configurable ways, including technical system
analysis, polling, perception surveying, and analysis of data collected through
the participation processes. Metrics may be harvested and collected
periodically. Some data may be shared publicly, while others (like financial
results) may be aggregated, derived, meta and remain entirely embedded and
confidential. Controls may be established to require compliance and validate
results – a nearly perfect performance measurement system is available.

REALNEO will internally
compile and track usage and transaction data, generating system metrics and presenting
rich trends, overall and by member, event and COIL, analyzing such success
indicators as user penetration and participation values at various levels. The
technology enables polling, which may be used to periodically measure customer
satisfaction, expectations, and interests… for example, following an event or
quarterly. Metrics of technology uptime and responsiveness are also available
and important.

Most exciting is
determining how good performance with such “internal� measures of success
enable overall economic development and entrepreneurship success among members
and in NEO. A first measure of such
success will be level of adoption and approval of REALNEO within the community
– level at which economic development organizations (EDOs) and entrepreneurs
use the framework and give good evaluations of its value and functionality…
enabling framework TQI. The second measure of overall success will be metrics
of how the framework enables the success of member EDOs and entrepreneurs and
NEO to succeed, which may include measures of human and organizational participation,
funding realized, jobs created, companies formed, revenues and profits
realized. Outside success measures may be ad hoc, measuring success of
individual participants within the framework, and comprehensive, measuring
value realized and contributed by all participants. Some such insight will be
captured by the framework applications and some will be provided by participants
through surveying and requiring periodic updating of demographic data. These
analyses may be scheduled, implemented and enforced via the members’ user
interface.

One beauty of a
centralized strategy like REALNEO, versus today’s unstructured, non-strategic, highly
distributed regional economic development support model, is that consistent comparative
and overall success outcome measures will now become possible, Currently, no
consistent measurement framework is possible with 600+ EDOs and 1,000s of
entrepreneurs operating in unique and largely hidden virtual and physical
worlds. The greater the centralization and more comprehensive the adoption of
the REALNEO framework, the more insightful the possible metrics of success of
participants, offering a broad, comprehensive view of regional comparative and
trend data not possible today at the micro or macro levels. NEO will become the
model of excellence in this for the rest of the world to follow.