The innovation process and its organisational setting - fit or misfit?

A new microwave based technology for enlarged prostate treatment has been developed that, in contrast to the established surgical method, does not require surgery, anaesthesia and subsequent hospitalisation. The development of this technology and a company supplying it was initiated and encouraged by a hospital belonging to a health care sector that deliberately promoted innovation efforts in order to increase cost-efficiency. Still, when the microwave based technology was ready for use, it was revealed that the health care sector that initiated the innovation journey was equipped with both professional and organisational structures that counteracted this process. It is this innovation process we will explore in this paper. The overall research question concerns the interaction between the innovation process and the organisational setting it emerges within: In what way does the organisational setting a) facilitate and b) hinder the embedding of the potential innovation.