1. A dedicated “innovation” team that works outside the company’s core “processes” (a.k.a. red tape) does not exist
2. You share or borrow resources from other teams who help out in addition to their core duties or have a “20% time” policy.
3. A budget to spend on non-core R&D and other expenses was never factored in and/or approved.
4. People expect the output from this “innovation” team to follow the same rate of return as your core product teams.
5. You plan on engaging other (Architects, DevOps, Eng., etc.) core teams after all the work is done to come up with some sort of transition plan.
6. No committed initial plan on what you will go after initially.
7. No pass/fail metrics were setup.
8. You do not have complete buy in from the top.

While all of the reasons above carry weight, if I had to pick one, it would be the first reason – the lack of a dedicated innovation team.

For most enterprises that have a part-time innovation team; all that innovation gets pushed aside when shit hits the fan – then its all-hands-on-deck – innovation, becomes an afterthought.

From a previous post: “It’s important for an enterprise to have a team that focuses on innovation as a “full-time strategic” activity and not as a “part-time ad-hoc” effort in order to have a greater chance of success with innovation – here is why: 75 % of venture-capital-backed start-ups fail; and 50% of backed start-ups make it to their 4th year. These startups, usually consist of dedicated entrepreneurial teams trying to build something, spending 100% of their energy, every minute of every hour trying to make it successful – they are in it full time. If a startup’s “full-time” innovation effort has such a low rate of success, what will be the success rate of a part-time effort?”

A dedicated team must be created if an enterprise wants to make innovation a strategic effort. If you have no one fully focused on innovation, you’ve decided not to focus on innovation.