Innovations in Domotics : fulfilling potential or hampered by prevailing technological regime?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning, as well as the drivers, of innovation in theory and practice for gaining insight into the reasons why the diffusion of innovative technologies fails; even though they promise a superior performance compared to incumbent technologies. The paper describes an explorative study of the diffusion of domotics technologies in residential construction. Design/methodology/approach – Innovation systems theory, which points to the "technological regime" in the actor network as a key element in the diffusion, acceptance, and application of new technologies was used to analyse the diffusion of domotics technologies in residential construction. Findings – The results underscored the expected "bottlenecks" in the technological regime of the innovation system that curtailed the diffusion of domotics technologies in construction. Originality/value – The novelty of the paper is in the approach of the research and the collected data on the technological regime amongst the stakeholders. These stakeholders were principally involved in development and implementation of the domotics technologies in residential construction; these observations provided useful insights into the diffusion of domotics technologies.