This paper develops an understanding of innovation failure by focusing on the interplay between innovation projects and their broader innovation fields. We do so by analyzing the innovation field of antibiotic development, which is described as experiencing an innovation deadlock amidst the global challenge of rising antimicrobial resistance. Using a practice-based structuration approach, we analyze 16 antibiotic projects that experienced setbacks in later drug development stages and identify three projects' responses to these setbacks (reviving the project, shifting the project to another field, terminating the project). We show how these project responses, over time, influence each other and thereby shape the structure of innovation field. This interaction creates a recursive dynamic that reinforces a cycle of innovation failure, contributing to the stagnation in antibiotic innovation at the field level. Our study contributes to debates on innovation failure in two ways: firstly, it challenges static understandings of failure as the endpoint of a process and instead posits that project failure is a continually renegotiated condition that influences the structure of the innovation field. Secondly, by adopting a structuration perspective, this study emphasizes the interplay between external pressures and internal dynamics in innovation failure, enhancing our understanding of the self-reinforcing mechanisms at the field level, particularly concerning urgent societal challenges such as antimicrobial resistance.
