An increase in greenhouse gas emissions, coupled with elevated environmental awareness, has triggered the necessity of focusing on effective management of the Canadian oil sands. From Kyoto to Copenhagen, Canada's industry practices have been criticized. The deployment of sustainable production technologies is crucial for the survival of Canada's oil sands industry. Current literature is dominated by science and engineering scholars, yet a major problem appears to be a lack of full understanding of the multiple dimensions of the oil sands projects and the many players involved in innovation of sustainable technologies. A focused attempt to understand the development and commercialization process, with a view towards developing guidelines for individuals and institutions in managing innovation, would therefore be a useful contribution to the oil sands literature. This article proposes such an approach. The framework developed in this article is applied to a case study, with specific attention paid to identifying facilitating and inhibiting factors.