Why is Innovation SO hard?

What is preventing our great ideas from becoming reality? 

An original cartoon by KenMillerGroup

  The role of the Innovation Team at Bank of Hawaii is to be a facilitator - help good ideas become reality.  Granted a new department for BOH - a realization that we have to constantly evolve if we want to stay on top - but to those focused on the bottom line, the revenue driving value of Innovation, a record of only five (5) ideas implemented in seven months isn't exactly impressive.  So if we have a whole department, a sole person dedicated to Innovation, and even allocated budget - why only a few ideas?

  Is it a lack of ideas?  If we were measured on ideas volume alone, Innovation would be competing with some of those revenue-driving business units as we have over 180 ideas in just six months of having the website up.  We created a venue where people could share their ideas freely and openly.  Adding in additional social aspects, such as "Like"-ing the item and commenting, the ideas continue to grow and evolve.  While every idea may not be something we would implement right away (or if ever), tons of them are small process improvements and efficiencies that add up significantly.

  Is it a lack of communication of value?  To help with the processing of ideas, we have the idea submitters come to an Ideas Review Team.  NOTE: this is NOT a committee, no decision making, but rather, it's a discussion with people from all areas of the organization to hear and talk with the idea submitter about why the idea is so important.  The discussion then tends to consider what is possible, how could we evolve the idea and what are we doing now that we could incorporate some or all of the idea...It's a wonderful discussion that gets the idea submitters involved while showing the culture shift to more open, collaborative ways (no more 'boring', wasted meetings...not that we would ever have those). 

  So what's stopping us?!  I feel it's a mix of workload, priorities and passion. 

• Workload - that's a given.  Every one's busy, constantly doing more with less in an ever changing economy.  And now the Innovation Manager wants me to do something else!??!  How do they incorporate it into their busy schedules?  They do it by the next point - priorities.
• Priority - You've heard before Covey's Quadrants - are you working on the right thing at the right time.  We work on the Important but Not Urgent quadrant too much, allowing those Not Important but Urgent items interrupt us, causing stress when something that is actually Important AND Urgent comes up.  The trouble with the ideas are most are Important but Not Urgent; however, failing to address now leads to issues down the road. 
• Passion - every heard a "happy worker is a hard worker?"  I believe this fully - motivated people will always go above and beyond what is expected, but if they don't believe in it, it won't get done.  Period.  And this may be a bigger issue than the Innovation team alone can tackle alone, but it is something to consider - are you working with the right people to Innovate.

I'd like to know what thoughts others have on not just "barriers to innovation", but the realities we see.  I look forward to discussing further where I'm trying to take these things and move them forward.

~Jamie Champagne