Exploring Organizational Readiness and Ecosystem Coordination for Industrial XR

TL;DR

This paper investigates why industrial XR adoption remains limited despite technological maturity, emphasizing organizational readiness and ecosystem coordination as key factors for successful deployment.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of the 'Pilot Trap' and highlights the shift from technological to organizational barriers in scaling XR solutions.

Findings

Organizational readiness constraints have overtaken technological issues in XR adoption.

Systemic misalignments among stakeholders hinder enterprise XR integration.

Successful deployment requires ecosystem-level coordination and organizational transformation.

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.