Faster and more wide-ranging innovation is often urged as the key to solving the various challenges that currently face humankind, from climate change to income inequality. This article looks at a complex example of innovation, the portability of qualifications proposed in the "Groningen Declaration on Student Data Depositories Worldwide" (Groningen Declaration), and reviews some of the political and social obstacles that might slow down or prevent the implementation of this idea. First, the author explains the Groningen Declaration in simple terms and then examines various issues that stakeholders, such as students, universities, employers and governments, would want it to address. Then the author gathers these various issues into three broad categories: privacy, trust and student mobility--and argues that each of them poses special problems at the current time. The aim is not to discourage innovation, but to remind those pushing new ideas that the obstacles to their adoption may often seem to have little direct relation to the idea itself.