The adoption of emerging technology-driven media innovations. A comparative study of the introduction of virtual and augmented reality in the media and manufacturing industries

ABSTRACT

Media companies often fail to successfully adopt emergent technology-driven media innovations. In order to analyse the pitfalls of implementation and to identify media-organisation-specific weaknesses, eleven cases from the media and manufacturing industries in Germany that adopted XR (which encompasses virtual, mixed and augmented reality technology) were compared. Several organisational drivers were especially important for successful adoption such as top management support, existence of an innovation champion, fit with the company/innovation strategy, cooperation with internal IT and long-term planning for the build-up of sustainable expertise within the companies. Whereas the media firms profited in some regards from their editorial background (i.e., high motivation of the projects’ innovation champions), the lack of strategic planning and limited internal IT resources were found to hamper a successful adoption.

KEYWORDS:

• Emergent technologies
• media innovations
• innovation adoption
• virtual reality
• augmented reality
• media industry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Mediencluster NRW GmbH, a subsidiary of the public Film- und Medienstiftung NRW.

Notes on contributors

Christian Zabel

Christian Zabel, is Full Professor for Innovation and Corporate Management at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences since 2016. His research focuses on production and distribution processes in digital media, especially online video. Since 2018 he is spokesman for the media economics division of Germany’s Communication research Association DGPUK. Before he headed the product management of t-online.de, Germany’s largest online publisher. From 2008 to 2012, he was executive assistant to Deutsche Telekom’s CEO René Obermann, overseeing strategic cooperations with the media industry. Christian Zabel studied journalism in Dortmund and Brussels and holds a master’s degree in political science from Sciences-Po Paris.

Verena Telkmann

Verena Telkmann, is a research assistant in the field of production structures for digital media and a Ph.D. candidate at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences. In research she focuses on digital media production and media economics. She completed her bachelor’s degree in business administration with a focus on marketing in 2014 at the institute for dual study programs at the university of applied sciences Osnabrück and her master’s degree in communication, multimedia and market management in the year 2017 at the university of applied sciences Dusseldorf. She gained practical experience in online marketing of CHECK24 Mobilfunk GmbH.