Innovation. Everyone wants it; few achieve it — or at least not easily. That’s a fact I was considering recently when I interviewed Faye Sahai, Executive Director of Innovation and Advanced Technology at Kaiser Permanente, on the topic of “Seeding Innovation.”

Fostering innovation-- a topic we have discussed previously in a blog and another here -- is gaining new urgency. Scan the news these days and you’ll see summer camps, professional organizations, governments, and of course businesses in every industry and country, offering awards, incentives, contests and funds for new ideas. They all seem to know that without innovative approaches and fresh ideas, the economy will stagnate and progress will stall. Why, then, is it still so tough to really execute on these goals?

One reason, alluded to by Google’s CEO Larry Page last week, is that you have take risks. In response to questions about the company’s innovation model, he was quoted as saying: “When we started doing search, people thought we were crazy.” Clearly, that risk has paid off.

Another big innovation inhibitor is funding. Even Google’s Page and other executives — never mind those lower down in the organization — have to defend some seemingly “crazy” investments to nervous boards and investors who don’t see innovation for its own sake as a good business model.

Additionally, many experts say that in order to succeed, you have to expect some failures along the way — and that’s not always easy to accept. In fact, at many organizations, corporate culture can become a barrier that restrains innovation. Unless everyone is in sync — and makes innovation part of the way the enterprise operates — it will be tough to pull off.

These are all points that Sahai addressed during our interview. Kaiser — one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plans with $424.2 billion in 2010 revenue and more than 8.6 million members — seems to have conquered these innovation obstacles, and a long list of awards and accolades demonstrates that it’s on the right track.

It certainly helps that Chairman and CEO George Halvorson is on board, as is the CIO, Phil Fasano. But even with buy-in, innovation could get stalled in the discussion phase without someone like Sahai and her team driving it forward every day.

As she told me, “Innovation is in the company’s DNA; it’s part of our root and core.” To some, Sahai may have a dream job, with access to internal and external partners and the weight of Kaiser’s Garfield Innovation Center at her disposal. But her own diverse background in both IT and business has helped her to champion ideas and inspire others while aligning with the business every step of the way.

With healthcare reform and competitive pressures, she knows that there’s a lot riding on leapfrogging others with new robotics, e-health and predictive analytics, as well as fast delivery of member services. At the same time, she needs the support of the doctors, nurses and providers who are often more concerned about high touch than high tech.

Her tactics are to collaborate closely with IT to “operationalize” innovation rather than keeping it in silos. For instance, she uses an internal social media platform to share ideas and expertise among employees “so it bubbles up” through the organization. Additionally, HR rewards idea-generation as part of employee performance reviews. It takes “technology, people and funding,” to put ideas into action, she says.

Sahai makes it seem easy to seed innovation — and maybe it is. Her advice? Open the environment to employees and partners; identify a leader and a strategy and fund the efforts, and encourage sharing of both successes and failures.

Hey, it’s worth a try …

You can find more data on IT innovation in this article on Smart Enterprise Exchange. For more details on Kaiser’s efforts, read the current issue of Smart Enterprise magazine. Also, listen to the full podcast with Faye Sahai and let me know your thoughts.

Paula Klein

Editor and Community Manager

Smart Enterprise Exchange