Abstract
As the focus on reducing CO2 emissions increases and the global demand of energy is rising, the oil and gas industry faces competition from other sources of energy. To take competitive advantage with competing energy suppliers, technology and innovation may be an important factor to ensure commercial viability for the oil and gas sector. The thesis explores selection principles GE Oil and Gas use to consider innovation initiatives. In a qualitative, three embedded case I analyse institutional factors and innovation factors that affect the selection of innovation initiatives. Furthermore, I use interviews, observations and documents to understand how these selection principles can facilitate radical innovations solving the major challenges facing the oil and gas industry. GE Oil and Gas is a supplier to the oil and gas industry and they collaborate with customers and stakeholders in the selection of innovation initiatives. GE Oil and Gas interact with customers and stakeholders on three levels of which they enjoy an informal relationship strongly affecting how they select innovation initiatives. Furthermore, the analysis implicates that formal institutional factors on all three levels strongly affect the potential to succeed with radical innovation initiatives at GE Oil and Gas. The analysis reveals that companies who fails to succeed with radical innovation initiatives at times where innovation factors are not the main challenge to innovation selection, can facilitate successful radical innovations by improving their formal selection principles. Improvement occurs by strengthening formal principles through the allocation of resources (time, personnel and money), removing time-consuming bottlenecks for innovation and setting the priorities to select and succeed with radical innovations. Finally, the thesis implicates that implementing these measures will enhance the unqiue position of GE Oil and Gas to develop radical technology solving some of the challenges facing the oil and gas industry.