Understanding business customers' resistance to adopt industrial service innovations

This paper aims to understand customer companies' resistance to adopt industrial service innovations provided by their supplier companies. Industrial services have become an important form of differentiation which increases their importance as innovations. The study describes important factors leading to organizational customers' resistance within the context of industrial service innovation. It seems that innovation providers often misjudge the utility and expenses related to a service innovation. This may be the result of a pro-innovation bias.The results emphasize the affective dimension of organizational service decisions and the risk aversive and conservative nature of companies' behaviour. The effect of organizational decision making is clarified. We find that organizational resistance is ambivalent and that it reveals important drawbacks of an innovation that need to be addressed. Implications for both supplier companies and customer companies as well as innovation research are discussed