While failure is perceived to be a natural part of the innovation process, no one really wants to see their innovation team fail, particularly when the stakes are high. My NineSigma colleagues and I have been giving it some thought lately, and it is interesting to hear people's answers to the question 'Why do teams fail?' Fast Company featured this topic in their 30-second MBA video series and asked NineSigma's Denys Resnick to prepare a short (yes, 30 seconds) video on the topic. Denys asserted that it is 'trust' that lies at the core of any good team. When we proposed the question to a broader audience via our LinkedIn group, we received an interesting response from a client.

Blaine Childress, a seasoned innovation leader from Sealed Air and a client of ours, had some interesting thoughts on the why teams fail. Per Blaine: "There are many, many reasons:

1)  lack of trust- results in isolated rather than cooperative, synchronous progress. If the members are not interacting and communicating, an advance by one sect may not fit with that by another. If this continues too long without shared update re-tooling is needed, time is lost, and blame games too often ooze in.
2)  environment- a team may possess the right composition, practice the proper level of communication and role responsibility, but be broad-sided by upper management's sudden change in priority. Budgets can be cut to a crippling level; critical members may be pulled away (together with the skill/talent they were previously providing); and excitement fades. It is difficult to resume the race with such losses.
3)  loss of urgency- nothing drives team melding like a common sense of urgency. Rapid progress toward what is uniformly seen as IMPORTANT provides self-satisfaction. Management must be present at quarterly or monthly team report meetings to echo/reinforce the importance of the effort and the launch date. A team ignored can often be a team that loses momentum. Obviously, urgency is linked to environment.
4)  lack of continuity- the team should have consistency in terms of its leadership and communicators. Membership will naturally change as a project matures from early prototypes to early stage manufacture, but champions from the internal and external subteams should be kept to insure clear relay of purpose and maintain trust."

In addition to these reasons, I am interested to hear what other factors can cause a group to fail. Please share your thoughts with us.