Thesis on ‘Innovation Resistance’

So as my thesis work has almost started (I use almost because it’s actually in the proposal phase!), I had been doing a LOT of literature reviews. For those of you who don’t know what it is, well… it’s about reading lot of materials about the interested subject area in which you wish to pursue your research and find a gap. This gap can be anything that has not been done before to your own unique contribution which may add to the existing studies that has been done. So basically the more literature reviews you do, the more idea you have about what’s there and what’s not.

As for me personally, I was interested into the field of innovation resistance. Given that I hail from an IT/IS background, my education and trainings have been mostly in business + technology domains. Therefore, innovation seems to be a good field where I can apply my classroom learning.

So what exactly is innovation resistance? Allow me to put my nerd cap on again! 😀

Let’s start with an example. You have been using a dumb phone for while now and have been quite satisfied with this service. Then one fine day, suddenly, comes along a smart phone into the market with better displays, wireless access protocol (WAP) services, improved multimedia and applications. Everyone you know in your friend circle has rushed to catch a glimpse of this new ‘innovation’ and potentially also get their hands on it. There has been much hype around it but guess what?! You don’t really care! You say that you are quite happy with what you have and are comfortable using it in the future too. Regardless of the exact reasons, this shows that you are now resisting the use of this particular innovation that has been introduced into the market.

Putting this into perspective, this topic is more to see why people in general resist the use of something new. May that be product or service but innovations are considered to be an improvement from their predecessors and are expected to be diffused among the customers. Despite of this notion, many organizations fail to make customers use their new product or service, leading us to an interesting position to see exactly what the reasons are. It is also strongly proven by statistics too that around 70% of the new product or services introduced to the market fail to diffuse into customers. Hence, I find this as a vital domain to study and provide implications for organizations, IT developers, designers and marketers alike so that they may understand and devise policies and strategies to overcome this user resistance towards innovation.

Well as of now, let’s hope my proposal goes along well and I manage to start the work soon. Stick around here to read more about how I progress!

Adios!

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Image taken from internet

Redwan

Written by Redwan

28 Feb 2016