Companies may fail despite attracting the best managers and tech professionals, raising record funding and developing the state-of-the-art product anticipated by the market, as was the case with multiple startups in the tablet computer industry. In this paper we argue that shifting the focus from the individual firm to a broader process of cumulative synthesis of technology evolution offers a better-informed explanation of individual organisational failure and a much-needed theoretical perspective in innovation management. Our focus is on the little-studied nascent phase of an industry where multiple companies competed to stabilise the technology and define a dominant design. Through the analysis of multiple case studies we demonstrate how both successful and failed attempts of technology innovation are a productive part of the multi-generational technology evolution process. By studying this process, we contribute to the explanation of industry evolution, technology progression and trajectories of individual firms contributing to it, showing how cumulative synthesis theory can offer a valuable theoretical perspective with implications for innovation theory but also for the explanation of firm survival. The implications of this study for firms seeking to commercialise technologies at this nascent phase are that they should take a long-term perspective, match their product to a niche market, and ensure learning from failures.
