Exploring Organizational Readiness and Ecosystem Coordination for Industrial XR
For industrial practitioners and XR stakeholders, it reveals that adoption failures stem from misaligned incentives and organizational issues rather than technology gaps.
This study identifies that the primary barrier to scaling industrial Extended Reality (XR) from pilots to operational deployment is organizational readiness and ecosystem coordination, not technological maturity, based on 17 expert interviews.
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.