From readiness to realization: the role of intellectual capital in industrial metaverse adoption
Dominik A. Henkel, Désirée A. C. WielandPurpose
This study investigates how intellectual capital (IC) shapes Industrial Metaverse (IM) adoption by identifying key success factors and explaining how their relevance evolves across different stages of the organizational adoption process.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative study draws on 33 semi–structured interviews with IM experts from business–to–business (B2B) environments. The data were analyzed using an inductive–deductive approach integrating the Technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework, diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory and an IC perspective.
Findings
The findings identify 16 IM adoption success factors across the technological, organizational, and environmental dimensions and demonstrate how their importance changes across five adoption stages. By mapping these stage-specific success factors to human, structural and relational capital, the study explains how reconfiguring IC across the adoption process enables the transition from initial technological awareness to successful implementation and long-term organizational embedding.
Research limitations/implications
The study contributes to technology adoption and IC research by conceptualizing IM adoption as an ecosystemic and processual reconfiguration of IC rather than a purely technological implementation process. It further extends technology adoption research by highlighting the dynamic interplay between adoption stages, ecosystem pressures, and IC mobilization.
Originality/value
This study is among the first to integrate the TOE framework, DOI theory and IC perspectives in the context of IM adoption. It demonstrates that successful IM adoption depends less on technological readiness alone than on the continuous mobilization and reconfiguration of human, structural and relational capital.