Dr. David P. Norton Joins Cognos Innovation Center Advisory Board

– Center expands with addition of strategy management arm to help organizations better link strategy with execution on a continuous basis –

BURLINGTON, Mass. - Nov. 1, 2005 - Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM), today announced that Dr. David P. Norton is joining the advisory board of the Cognos Innovation Center™ for Performance Management. Dr. Norton is a co-founder of Balanced Scorecard Collaborative (BSCol), a Palladium company and president of Palladium Group Inc., a leading professional services firm enabling clients to execute strategy.

Dr. Norton’s advisory position will support the Innovation Center’s new strategy management practice, which adds a second core content pillar to the Center’s existing planning and performance management focus. The new practice will help advance Cognos customers’ understanding of strategy management techniques and best-practices with thought leadership materials, executive forums and the application of Cognos’ proven, third-generation scorecarding technology, which was designed to help companies better integrate strategy with all the critical performance management processes across the enterprise.

As co-author of three world-renowned books on the Balanced Scorecard, and most recently, Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes , Dr. Norton’s expertise in strategy management and execution will help Cognos’ customers integrate strategy with financial and operational planning, organizational and human capital alignment, continuous improvement, business analytics, and reporting.  The result is an improved ability to execute corporate strategy on a sustainable basis.

In his role as advisor, Dr. Norton will participate in one-on-one visioning sessions, executive roundtables and workshops designed to help companies develop a vision and roadmap for sustainable process improvement.

“Nine out of 10 companies fail to execute strategy Companies recognize that describing corporate strategy and communicating it to everyone in the organization is necessary but not sufficient,” said Dr. Norton. “Effectively linking strategy to all the performance management processes on a continuous basis will significantly unlock business value.  Technology is imperative to realizing this vision.  By working with technology leaders such as Cognos, we hope to accelerate the evolution of strategy-focused organizations.”

Balanced Scorecard Collaborative research indicates that linking strategy execution to corporate goals and overall performance is a major challenge for many organizations. Research indicates that:

• 67 percent of HR and IT organizations are not aligned with strategy;
• 85 percent of exec teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy;
• 60 percent do not link budgets to strategy;
• 70 percent of middle managers do not have incentive compensation linked to strategy
• On average, 95 percent of a company’s employees are unaware of—or do not understand—its strategy.

Strategy-focused organizations make strategy a continuous process owned by the entire enterprise -- from top management to front-line workers. Many Balanced Scorecard adopters, like Cognos, have taken their ground-breaking tools to the next level by using the Scorecard to create an entirely new performance management framework that puts strategy at the center of key management processes and systems.

About the Cognos Innovation Center
The Cognos Innovation Center was established in June 2004 and expanded to Europe in May 2005 to advance the understanding of proven planning and performance management techniques, technologies and practices. Staffed by experts in planning, management, and technology, the Innovation Center partners with more than 200 Cognos customers, academics, industry leaders, and others seeking to accelerate adoption, reduce risk, and maximize the impact of technology-enabled performance management practices. Visit:  http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/

About Cognos:

Cognos delivers the next level of competitive advantage - Corporate Performance Management (CPM) - achieved through the strategic application of BI on an enterprise scale. Our integrated CPM solution helps customers drive performance through planning; monitor performance through scorecarding; and understand performance through business intelligence.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries. Cognos enterprise business intelligence and performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.