It seems like there are two different sections of business being talked about here.
One is the business of innovation. A design company that is in the business of the new. There is a requirement for churning newness and showing innovation. The hot product studio shot shows up on the company portfolio page. What the market result actually is is a different story. If something new falls flat, there are other projects to balance, all overall good.
The second seems to be design inside a company whose business is to sell widgets. Perhaps that organization is not focused on constant newness, but selling things that maybe sold into markets where newness and novelty have a percentage value to tried and true. If there is no support in the sales structure for something new, then any new innovation or idea will likely fall flat on its face. Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan, it falls right back into the lap of the original promoter.
This is the attitude of a non-market leader, with no intentions to take the front runner spot. I am not saying that is a bad thing, just a statement of fact. Not everyone wins the Tour de France, some draft on others, and unlike the Tour, in business second place is a place. The desire to win and be new has to come from the top of the company, not the designers.
My experience is similar but different in some cases. I show the ideas internally a year or two ahead of when they are introduced by the market leader. They are rejected as too unusual when they are coming from inside, yet when the competitor introduces them they are embraced by marketing and sales as something that has to be done as quickly as possible. This is the majority of marketing departments that are following the companies that take the bigger risks.
My most recent experience has been “if that (technology) was possible, how come the big companies have not done it??” The answer here was to slowly push each envelope and demonstrate that new things can work and be accepted by the market. Once the ability has been demonstrated on a smaller scale, the stake holders are prepared to take bigger leaps and risks.
That is the power of a sketch, it cannot be argued except by another sketch, and the vast majority of people cannot sketch.