Civilizational development has been, and continues to be, closely linked to the emergence of innovative solutions. The systems approach provides a practical instrument for implementing this holistic vision, as it allows the activities of creators of innovative solutions to be described and modeled as an organized process composed of interrelated elements and processes. An important process involves evaluating innovative solutions and identifying the best or optimal solutions with a view to their commercialization. This requires comparison and ordering within a limited set of analyzed solutions. The task is straightforward when the ordering is based on a single measurable feature, that is, in single-criterion evaluation. A considerably more complex task is multi-criteria evaluation, which takes into account both measurable and non-measurable features. In some instances, such evaluation is carried out using a heuristic approach. In many cases, however, particularly where the evaluation must be justified, an analytical approach employing mathematical tools of varying complexity is preferable. This is the approach adopted in the present study, which proposes the evaluation of innovative solutions using multi-criteria methods. The aim of the article is to present an approach in which inventions are not treated as isolated entities, but as elements of a broader system, with this systemic positioning determining the criteria used for their evaluation. To this end, an example system and its associated criteria were defined, and the AHP method was then used to evaluate a selected group of inventions.