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 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. 

While Airbus had overcome many of the feasibility obstacles needed to fly these ‘zero emission’ planes, a lack of strong commitments by airlines to purchase the aircraft made it difficult to push ahead. Their reluctance to commit was driven in part by the cost implications of switching to a new, and currently much more expensive fuel. This was further compounded by the absence of viable infrastructure to produce, transport and store the hydrogen that fuels this new generation of aircrafts.  

As Shah put it, they were faced with a classic chicken-and-egg scenario: Airlines won't commit without infrastructure, and infrastructure won't get built without demand. His 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.

For Sousa and Johnson, the broader lesson extends well beyond aviation. Bold public commitments can catalyse an ecosystem – Airbus's announcement helped spark collaborations like the Goliath hydrogen infrastructure programme – but they only pay off if paired with the patience to iterate, and the humility and courage of leaders to adapt without abandoning the goal. As Johnson puts it, 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.