Implementing Digital Innovations: Overcoming Organizational Challenges

Abstract

While real estate owners play a significant role in advancing digitalization and sustainability within the sector, there's limited understanding of their innovation processes. This article aims to increase understanding on the innovation processes and dynamic capabilities in real estate owner organizations. The article examines a longitudinal case study within a prominent Swedish real estate owner known for significant investments in smart building technologies. Despite these investments, practical benefits face hurdles, reflecting broader challenges in real estate sector digitalization projects. These obstacles include top-down innovation focus, limited cross-functional and user-centric innovation, innovation process discontinuities, ambiguous innovator roles, hierarchical communication, resource constraints, and uncertainties in technology implementation. The study emphasizes the inclusion of diverse perspectives in innovation processes and suggests further research on organizational and user-centric aspects. It contributes to real estate and facility management literature by proposing potential solutions to innovation processes, offering valuable insights for industry practitioners and researchers alike.