What drives resistance to innovation amongst device makers in the medical radiographic industry? A qualitative case study investigating the use of microfocus X-ray tubes and the barriers to a widespread usage in the medical radiography

Abstract

In academia, literature on innovation have over the last few decades predominantly focused on what strategies can help drive acceptance of new innovative products and services. However, the arguably quite high failure rate for market introductions of innovative products indicates that academia and innovative companies should increase the focus on understanding the challenges and pitfalls that could potentially affect the market introduction’s degree of success. Far from all innovations are successfully adopted by consumers, and there may be several situational or contextual user and market related reasons for this. Since the millennia, an increasing amount of research and literature have focus on innovation resistance with the ambition of unearthing the factors that influence the intended users. This field of innovation resistance is as such fairly new, resulting in a lack of generally applicable theories and definitions which may be a consequence of the factors of resistance being situational and contextual and therefore varying between industries and markets. This research focus on understanding what drives innovation resistance within the medical radiographic industry. For means of understanding the intrinsic drivers and barriers of resistance specific to the industry, the research has focused on the case of microfocus technology and medical X-ray. An innovation introduces change to an industry, and when it does, it will arguably face some resistance among the target customers. Through this case study, the main triggering drivers of innovation resistance within the medical radiographic industry are identified (unawareness or indifference to innovation, and preferences for the status quo), what main barriers against innovation adoption are created (visibility, communicability, norms & traditions, usage, information, and risk), and through what modes of resistance the device-manufacturers resist the innovation (postponement of adoption, and rejection of the innovation). It is shown that the device-manufacturers resist the innovation to varying degrees, from caution to outright rejection. The innovation resistance is based upon the current lack of information regarding the technology, and inefficient dissemination of the benefits and functionality to alleviate the perceived risks and uncertainties revolving the innovation.