Airbus and the Hydrogen Horizon

The world’s leading aerospace company shows that successful innovation is not just about technical breakthroughs. Consumer demand, financial viability and a functioning ecosystem are crucial for an innovation to move from the drawing board to a commercially viable reality.That’s according to INSEAD professors Manuel Sosa and Adrian Johnson, in their conversation with Harsh Shah, a leading expert on Hydrogen fuel in the aviation sector. In this INSEAD Knowledge podcast, they discussed Airbus’s 2020 public commitment to bring the world’s first hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft to market by 2035.  Despite making major strides in developing the technical innovations needed to achieve this aim, Airbus ultimately had to push back their deadline due to challenges beyond their control. Sosa explains that this case underlines the fact that any company introducing innovations needs to consider the desirability, feasibility and viability framework of innovation if it has any real chance of success.As Shah put it, they were faced with a classic chicken-and-egg scenario: Airlines wouldn't commit without infrastructure, and infrastructure wouldn't get built without demand. His proposed solution was greater government intervention and financial incentives that absorbed cost premiums in the early stages, similar to those in other sectors, such as wind energy.As Johnson concludes, pushing back a deadline shouldn’t be seen as failure; it's what learning through experimentation actually looks like when the stakes, and the ambition, are this high.Read the related INSEAD Knowledge article and the two INSEAD Cases exploring the challenges faced by Airbus.