7 Conclusion

``No possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which man shall flay long distances through the air.''

Simon Newcomb (1835-1909), astronomer,
head of the U.S. Naval Observatory.

At the very outset of the project, our first thoughts were that the definition of a failed technology would be a product that was not commercially successful, or one that had an unfeasible implementation. It quickly became apparent that this was a typically narrow and dated view, and that we needed to concisely redefine the definition of failure in order to analyse and evaluate which technologies have failed and reasons for their failure. For example, one of our first ideas was that DAT (Digital Audio Tapes) technology, used for studio and live recording of music, was a failure, purely due to its lack of success in the commercial market. However, following this thought, it became clear that the technology, despite not being marketable for the home user, is widely used in professional applications such as recording studios^7.1. This niche market has made the technology a success, however this clearly contradicted our original definition. Having identified our definitions, our main expectation in examining failed technologies was that there would be one or two main reasons for any given technology to be unsuccessful. During our research, it became very apparent that modern technologies have a multitude of reasons for failure, and that these often had knock-on effects on each other, as illustrated by the dot.com case study. What was even more surprising was how significant the roles of social factors and communication were in these cases. We did not expect social trends to affect the consumers’ image of a product to such an extent that it became commercially unviable, as contributed to the downfall of the nuclear power industry in England. It was also surprising to see how many technologies produced from joint ventures have failed due to poor communications between the companies involved, as occurred between IBM and Microsoft in the development of the OS2/Warp operating system. Another interesting point was the way in which reasons for failure have changed over the past century. The complexity of technological development programs has increased dramatically in the last hundred years, and corporate size and complexity has grown with it, thus accentuating the reasons for and increasing the frequency of failure. There are so many factors involved in starting a project that need to be considered, companies in the present day almost always undertake feasibility studies to assess the likelihood of success. Despite having identified seven general areas relating to technological failure, some of these were found to be considerably more influential than others. From our analysis of the examples and case studies, it became apparent that design and marketing were most prevalent. This is very surprising as both these factors are under the complete control of the manufacturer and have no outside influences. It seems as though human error, whether on the part of individuals (as in the case of the Sinclair C5) or the company as a whole (for example the Acorn RISC PC), is one of the largest causes of technological failure. Another interesting and somewhat unexpected conclusion that can be made, was that the two main factors identified are independent of one another and therefore cannot influence each other. Whereas the design of the technology is primarily concerned with the way in which the final result can be achieved, marketing relates to the intended purpose and the functionality of the product or technology. Hence, it is clear that marketing cannot influence design and vice versa; however, communication is an important foundation for both these factors and is vital in order to achieve a successful design and marketing strategy. This can be concerned by the success of GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) phones. Initially the GSM phone was aesthetically similar to the satellite phone, which was its main competitor, yet due to the versatility of its design, such as its ability to work indoors and its strong marketing campaign, promising cheap handsets and calls, it has dominated the global mobile telecommunications market. It has been noted that marketing was and still is a highly prevalent element in the success of a product or technology. In today’s society and competitive market place, this has become more crucial than ever with the development of new forms of advertising media and the increasingly materialistic behaviour of consumers. Although it was discovered that design and marketing were independent factors, the other recognised factors are both heavily and complexly linked. Attempts were made to analyse these links in more detail, yet it was found that through the extrapolation of possible extreme situations, these links became overly abstract and diverse, thus making their use for analysis rather vague. Also, these components are external influences and therefore extremely difficult to control, unless the company in question is a monopoly within the market, such as Microsoft. Hence company resources would be put to more valuable use concentrating efforts on design and marketing, whilst ensuring that both internal and external communication is maintained to a high level.