innovation-accountinglisted

Turn startup progress into accountable numbers with Ries's innovation accounting: establish a baseline MVP, tune cohorts toward the ideal, and make pivot-or-persevere decisions on evidence. Use when reporting progress on an unproven product, when 'we're learning a lot' needs to become a measurable statement, for investor or stakeholder updates on early-stage work, or when the user says innovation accounting, learning milestones, baseline metrics, or how do we measure progress before product-market fit. Not for products with established standard metrics like ARR or for vanity-metric cleanup (that is vanity-metric-audit).
karozi/awesome-product-management-skills · ★ 2 · AI & Automation · score 56

Install: claude install-skill karozi/awesome-product-management-skills

# Innovation Accounting "We're making progress" is not a report. Innovation accounting makes early-stage progress measurable in three steps: establish the baseline, tune toward the ideal, and decide pivot or persevere. This skill runs all three — and refuses to let a learning claim survive without a number attached. ## The Three Steps 1. **Baseline.** Run an MVP, measure where the engine stands today: conversion, retention, churn — per cohort, worst-case honest. 2. **Tune.** Iterate to move the baseline toward the ideal one experiment at a time. Each iteration must move a named metric or it did not happen. 3. **Decide.** When tuning stops working, the pivot-or-persevere meeting gets the cohort evidence. Not before, not on mood. ## Modes ### Setup mode (default — new initiative or first time measuring) 1. Establish the baseline: for the current product or MVP, list per-cohort values for acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue (see pirate-metrics-aarr for bucket definitions). Where a number is unknown, mark UNKNOWN — unknown baselines are findings, not gaps to fill with averages. 2. Name the ideal: what each metric must reach for the engine to sustain the business. If the ideal cannot be stated, the hypothesis is not ready for accounting. 3. Copy `templates/learning-milestone-report.md` and define the first 3 learning milestones. ### Report mode (user pastes progress claims or an update draft) 1. Read `references/metrics-standar