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Reactive airport organizations are highly risk-averse when dealing with new technology. Whether due to constraints such as limited available capital, skill deficits, or a general leadership position of caution and conservative growth, these airport operators do not pursue technology solutions that are still considered “new” to the industry. Reactive organizations allow innovative organizations to identify and resolve challenges in technology and display proven success before developing their own implementation plan. They also wait for the strategic organizations to work out the business cases and allow the industry adoption rate to increase in size with numerous solutions available with a wealth of knowledge about procurement, installation, and operations. This allows these organizations to implement the technology more purposefully and cost-effectively than the early deployments. Reactive organizations typically do not have formal innovation research programs, as they leverage the lessons learned by peers to provide guidance.

Strategic airport organizations monitor where technology is going and study implementations conducted by innovative organizations and other strategic organizations to gain lessons learned and determine what trends are the most applicable to their unique environment. Strategic companies devote a portion of their time and resources to innovation and may deploy smaller-scale pilots to better understand emerging technology. A growing number of airports that fall into the strategic category are exploring or have begun to implement their own innovative research programs. Strategic airports focus efforts on pilots that have direct application within the airport and, therefore, can better develop business cases to showcase their importance.

Innovative organizations place emphasis on early adoption of technology and pioneering new solutions in the industry. Innovative organizations have developed internal innovation tracking programs that continually research the development of innovations and the impact they are having in other industries.  They also provide a leadership role in the aviation industry by developing concepts and performing pilot tests to establish use cases that provide a basis for the strategic organizations to begin to evaluate. Innovative airports have a unique set of circumstances and progressive leadership that enable them to be more risk tolerant in pioneering new technologies and solutions. These organizations have the skill sets to deploy and operate new technology solutions and drive improvements. Innovative organizations have a solution-minded culture and are experienced in leveraging new technology to solve challenges.

This Transformation Tier includes technologies for which airport organizations have little-to-no prior deployment experience and knowledge on how to properly implement or account for the technology. The technologies in this Transformation Tier are the most potentially revolutionizing operations since airport operators will have very little experience in or preparation for dealing with them.

Definition 

• Is the current computing or built environment able to support new technology?
• How much will the environment need to change to accommodate new technology?