A study of diffusion of Augmented Reality in the Swedish construction industry

Abstract

Innovations and technologies have proven to be a crucial step for organizations to gain competitive advantage. Construction companies are often known to lack innovative processes. However, studies have lately showed that the construction industry is starting to jump on the bandwagon, adopting new and innovative methods and technologies. A crucial part of this innovative gain can be derived to the digital development. This qualitative study will further on, aim to understand a part of this digital development, by evaluating augmented reality (AR) in large Swedish construction companies. The goal with this study is not to provide best practice but to evaluate AR and its potential. The thesis is predominantly going to utilize a framework developed from past diffusion studies, i.e. Rogers’s framework from his book Diffusion of Innovations, since it has proven to be beneficial to evaluate innovations. Rogers’s diffusion theory mainly emphasizes the innovation as the best mean to evaluate the diffusion. However, every industry is special and therefore construction specific theory and research have been included to complement the diffusion framework. This research will include which impact AR has had so far and which factors that have enabled and hindered the adaptation of AR. The results in this study indicate that the lacking properties of AR i.e. being expensive and providing insufficient results, are some of the reasons why AR has not diffused to a greater extent. There are also intangible reasons why AR has not diffused yet. The cultural resistance has, according the findings of this study, proven to be one of the major obstacles for adopting AR. The findings of this study also indicate revealing indications how AR is used, which differentiates from the theoretical findings. The theoretical findings that explain how AR is used momentarily, has proven to be overrated, meaning that AR has not diffused to all fields, e.g. product design, training, quality management, maintenance and safety, as researchers suggest. This study could only find quality managing and product design, to some extent, being used in reality.