International markets and cartels control many resources' prices. For example, the cartel OPEC controls oil prices throughout the world, and there is an international price for diamonds. If there is a new technology that is dependant on a particular resource, either directly or indirectly, and the price of that resource changes during or after the product has been developed, that could have a huge effect on the success of that technology. If this price change occurs during the development stage of the project, or even if the price remains the same, but the development requires a larger quantity of that resource than originally planned, a decision has to be made on whether to continue with the project. These decisions are often a very fine line, and some projects will be cancelled even after huge amounts of money have been spent on them.
One technology that was perhaps perceived as a failure at an early stage of the technology was the automobile. Before Henry Ford started manufacturing his Model T, cars were incredibly expensive, and very few people could afford them. There were very few cars around, and certainly not any of the motorways or highways that we see around the world today. At the time this technology could have been thought of as a failure. Why would anyone need a car anyway? They couldn't travel the long distances cars of today can. A horse and cart could do just the same job but was much cheaper. It failed because of the enormous cost of the materials used to build the cars and in deed, the cost of the human resources of the technicians and engineers who built them.
Then in 1913, Henry Ford started to produce his Model T on the world's first production line (with the help of Frederick Taylor) and from that moment onwards, the automobile was a technological success - one of the major successes of the last century.
Wrote that paragraph but wasn't sure it was really relevant!