While a radical innovation can be embedded in new products or new processes, most studies to date have concentrated on barriers to radical product innovations, with little insights available about the challenges for implementation of radical process innovations.,We theorize a set of barriers to radical process innovation based on a critical case study of an oil company. Our study employs data from 14 semi-structured interviews, one complete participant-observer in the process and access to all corporate documentation. The organization being studied was eventually unable to bring the new process technology to commercialization despite the technology having both technical feasibility and substantive cost savings potential.,We identify five groups of challenges that the company faced: (1) challenges in resource mobilization, (2) challenges in piloting strategy, (3) innovation leadership tensions, (4) tensions in managing shareholders' expectations and (5) product-process innovation tension (i.e. a unique situation when a company implementing a radical process innovation and simultaneously pursues the path to commercialize it as a product innovation).,Sustainable development is one of the major challenges in our era. Process innovations are crucial for achieving sustainability without changing the final product. By providing a list of challenges that executives face in the process of commercializing a radical process innovation, we can help them to achieve sustainability more effectively.,The paper responds to the call to increase our understanding of radical process innovations by utilizing a unique ethnographic research methodology of active participant-observation complemented by independent third-party face-to-face interviews.

中文翻译：

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根本性过程创新的障碍：以石油工业中的环境技术为例

虽然根本性创新可以嵌入到新产品或新流程中，但迄今为止，大多数研究都集中在根本性产品创新的障碍上，而对于实现根本性工艺创新所面临的挑战却知之甚少。基于一家石油公司的关键案例研究进行过程创新。我们的研究使用了来自14个半结构化访谈的数据，过程中一名完整的参与者观察者以及对所有公司文档的访问。尽管该技术具有技术可行性和实质性的成本节省潜力，但最终被研究的组织最终无法将新工艺技术投入商业化。我们确定公司面临的五类挑战：（1）资源动员方面的挑战，（2）试点策略的挑战，（3）创新领导者的紧张气氛，（4）管理股东期望的紧张感，以及（5）产品过程创新的紧张程度（即公司实施重大过程创新并同时追求创新的独特情况将其作为产品创新进行商业化的途径）。可持续发展是我们时代的主要挑战之一。工艺创新对于在不更改最终产品的情况下实现可持续性至关重要。通过提供高管人员在将重大流程创新商业化过程中面临的一系列挑战，我们可以帮助他们更有效地实现可持续发展。