Exploring Organizational Readiness and Ecosystem Coordination for Industrial XR

2026-01-14

AI Summary

This study addresses the persistent “pilot purgatory” that hinders the large-scale deployment of industrial extended reality (XR) applications. Through in-depth interviews with 17 industry experts and an ecosystem analysis framework, it reveals that the primary barriers have shifted from technological maturity to organizational readiness and stakeholder coordination. The work proposes a “great reversal” perspective, arguing that systemic factors—such as organizational change resistance, misaligned performance metrics, and internal political dynamics—now constitute the core challenges, rather than technical limitations. Emphasizing a problem-driven, ecosystem-coordinated transition pathway, the study identifies incentive misalignment as a critical friction point, offering both theoretical grounding and practical guidance for scaling industrial XR beyond isolated pilots.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Applications
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Coordination and Collaboration
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy

Abstract

Extended Reality (XR) offers transformative potential for industrial support, training, and maintenance; yet, widespread adoption lags despite demonstrated occupational value and hardware maturity. Organizations successfully implement XR in isolated pilots, yet struggle to scale these into sustained operational deployment, a phenomenon we characterize as the ``Pilot Trap.''This study examines this phenomenon through a qualitative ecosystem analysis of 17 expert interviews across technology providers, solution integrators, and industrial adopters. We identify a ``Great Inversion''in adoption barriers: critical constraints have shifted from technological maturity to organizational readiness (e.g., change management, key performance indicator alignment, and political resistance). While hardware ergonomics and usability remain relevant, our findings indicate that systemic misalignments between stakeholder incentives are the primary cause of friction preventing enterprise integration. We conclude that successful industrial XR adoption requires a shift from technology-centric piloting to a problem-first, organizational transformation approach, necessitating explicit ecosystem-level coordination.

Problem

• Industrial XR
• Pilot Trap
• Organizational Readiness
• Ecosystem Coordination
• Technology Adoption

Innovation

• Pilot Trap
• Organizational Readiness
• Ecosystem Coordination
• Great Inversion
• Industrial XR