# Disruptive Innovation in Traditional Clusters:
## 5 Case Study: The Kerajet Development
### A Long Road for Technology Adoption  
Due to the newness of the technology and some of its technical drawbacks, such as the difficulties encountered in adapting existing ceramic colors (based on inorganic water-soluble pigments) to print heads developed for other applications, a major problem occurred with ceramic tile producers' adoption  
Figure 2: First Kerajet 1999 prototype and latest P7 model 2019 (source Kerajet).  
of the new technology. This caused a considerable dilemma for the innovators [46]. The decision involved adopting, on one hand, a new form of technology that meant changing the existing craft production culture towards a digital computing environment, and on the other hand, a technology whose advantages were not apparently clear and which had been invented by a Spanish firm (meaning Italy, as the leader in mechanical ceramic tile equipment, was reluctant to adopt technology developed in other countries).  
The role of the final user of tile ceramics was not revealed until later in the development process of the technology. Cutting edge designs and applications were shown to customers and the possibilities of the new technology to imitate and even improve patterns of natural materials, such as marble or wood, had an impact on their demand for tile ceramics decorated with inkjet technology. However, only three or four tile producers with capacities in advanced production technologies really understood the implications of the new technology and were committed to it.  
During the dormant phase of inkjet technology development (2000-2004), few lead users (i.e., Zirconio, El Molino) adopted the technology enthusiastically, and their profiles were varied. One of these lead users was a medium-sized firm (300 employees), an exporter to Germany and England which specialized in cutting edge designs, who acquired four inkjet printers and contributed to a new generation of Kerajet printers with their comments and suggestions. This firm was the first in the Spanish cluster to incorporate data acquisition and control of the decoration process, and to be capable of envisioning the competences of the new technology. In a personal interview, their plant engineer showed us an excel table demonstrating the enormous savings of the inkjet alternative. The rest of the early inkjet adopters were amazingly small companies (60-70 employees). In an interview, one plant foreman explained to us how the new technology that they had struggled to learn involved having an ability to cope with short-batch deliveries and cut down inventories to satisfy their niche customers. However, the problem associated with this was that lead users believed they were developing differentiating competences and avoided disseminating their knowledge throughout the cluster, while lead producers tried the technology but rejected it, since it did not meet the needs of their mainstream customers, and their rejection was disseminated. One of the largest tile ceramic producers pointed out \"when our Italian competitors buy it, we will do it as well\".  
These two occurrences, namely digital inkjet technology development and its slow adoption by ceramic tile producers, took place at the same time. The fact of the mutual influence and communication between the Italian and Spanish ceramic tile clusters was essential to the initial difficulties with the new technology, and its conclusion and eventual success.