Financial: encourages the identification of a few relevant high-level financial measures. In particular, designers were encouraged to choose measures that helped inform the answer to the question "How do we look to shareholders?" Examples: cash flow, sales growth, operating income, return on equity.
Customer: encourages the identification of measures that answer the question "How do customers see us?" Examples: percent of sales from new products, on time delivery, share of important customers’ purchases, ranking by important customers.
Internal business processes: encourages the identification of measures that answer the question "What must we excel at?" Examples: cycle time, unit cost, yield, new product introductions.
Learning and growth: encourages the identification of measures that answer the question "How can we continue to improve, create value and innovate?". Examples: time to develop new generation of products, life cycle to product maturity, time to market versus competition.