The Failure of Fax: When a Vision Is Not Enough

Failure, the lack of technical and commercial success for a product in the marketplace, is endemic to innovative technologies. Failure is worthy of study if only to better understand success. Historians of business and technology accept this, but tend to focus more on success. This lack of coverage distorts our knowledge of the business process because failure is an integral, if not dominant, theme in the existence of companies. Much scholarly writing about failure concerns how entrepreneurs overcame obstacles -whether technical, economic, social, or political -to succeed. The roads not taken or only partially traveled rarely are explored in depth [39]. Often a strong Whiggish whiff of technological or economic determinism can be detected. When looking at failure, the range of potential causes is so wide that any easy answers should be suspect. Failures occur for a multitude of reasons, including the product, its institutional framework, the market, or factors beyond immediate control, such as monetary policy or war. Failure for one product or technology does not necessarily imply success for another, but competition is probably the most important single factor to consider. Competition includes the battle for resources, usually inside a finn or consortium, to develop and bring a product o market, as well as among products for the same market.