In various articles and books, Kaplan and Norton maintain that use of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) will increase an organization's ability to execute its strategy and therefore ultimately improve its performance.  They substantiate their hypothesis with numerous cases for which they report “breakthrough performance”.  Nonetheless, published empirical evidence for the BSC’s positive impact on performance is sparse. 
This article aims to contribute to the empirical research on the BSC’s performance impact describing a laboratory experiment.  Using a computer-based feedback-rich micro-world, the subjects were placed in a top manager position.  Their task was to implement a given strategy as best as they could, which meant to translate strategy into operational decisions over a period of 10 years.  The experiment group was equipped with a BSC management cockpit that was carefully tailored to the strategy, while the control group had to rely on traditional reports as information source. 
The experiment data are used to test the hypothesis that subjects provided with the BSC cockpit perform better than the control group.  Statistical analysis shows that this hypothesis could not be rejected.  The BSC cockpit indeed had a positive impact on performance.  Some possible explanations for this finding are discussed and issues for further research are outlined.