The main idea of this paper is that innovation is contributing to the efficiency and sustainability of investment. The main question is how to measure and assess efficiency of investment in innovation for the project benefit. The main objectives of this paper are: a) to analyse the concept and theoretical models of innovation, and b) to establish the criteria and select model for further assessing the efficiency of investment in innovation project. The research was based on analytical and expert methods and included theoretical analysis of literature sources, analytical, expert and comparison analysis. This paper discusses the definition of innovation of different authors, as well as the role of innovation for the efficiency of investment, and defines various criteria for measuring the efficiency of investment in innovation project. Paper suggests these criteria allocated to five groups related to product, process, finance, market and management. The comparison of three models (CBA, DEA and MCA) presented in this paper concluded that all three models in principle are suitable for assessing efficiency of investment in innovation project. However, the management aspect, which is hardly measurable but important in innovation efficiency performance analysis, suggests proceeding further modelling with MCA using it as complement to CBA.