• There are known paths by which ideas can be raised, developed, implemented and maintained.
• Innovation is supported whether it comes from people who have the skills and time to implement their idea, or from those who have a good idea but neither time nor skills to implement it.
• Being innovative is rewarded, even if ideas don't make it all the way into production.
• The University officially and culturally embraces creativity as a good in itself, not only as a means of generating useful end products.
• The Library's data, content, metadata and expertise are made maximally available for the development of new ideas (within the limits of privacy, license and copyright).
• There is a lively and supportive community of innovators across the entire University.
• There is a hub that engages in advanced research in areas related to library innovation and provides support for good ideas from the community.
• The community and the organizational entity engage with the worldwide community of library innovators as well as with the local community.
• Innovators want to work here.

• The Harvard community includes some of the most innovative people in the world.
• The Harvard Library staff is unsurpassed in its knowledge, expertise and professionalism.
• The resources of the Harvard Library—content, metadata, services—are substantial.
• It has become increasingly clear that the Harvard Library values innovation and collaboration.

Yet...

• Innovators are spread out across the University, often unknown to one another.
• The processes by which ideas are noticed, selected for development and evaluated are ad hoc.
• There are few resources available to develop good ideas.
• There is no known path by which an idea once developed can be maintained as a permanent part of the Library infrastructure.
• People’s job requirements do not make it easy to pursue innovative ideas.
• The pursuit of innovation—leading to a successful project or not—is not routinely rewarded or acknowledged.
• Harvard has a poor record as a collaborator within the worldwide library ecology.
• There is no institutional place within Harvard that focuses on library innovation—both development and research.