Despite huge fanfare at launch, after a few brief months Google Glass is no longer on the market.  The Amazon Fire Phone was also launched to great hype, yet sales flopped and the company recently took a $170M write off on inventory.

Fortune mercilessly blamed Fire Phone’s failure on CEO Jeff Bezos.  The magazine blamed him for micromanaging the design while overspending on development, manufacturing and marketing.  To Fortune the product was fatally flawed, and had no chance of success according to the article.

Similarly, the New York Times blasted Google co-founder and company leader Sergie Brin for the failure of Glass. He was held responsible for over-exposing the product at launch while not listening to his own design team.

Both these articles make the common mistake of blaming failed new products on (1) the product itself, and (2) some high level leader that was a complete dunce.  In these stories, like many others of failed products, a leader that had demonstrated keen insight, and was credited with brilliant work and decision-making, simply “went stupid” and blew it.  Really?

Unfortunately there are a lot of new products that fail.  Such simplistic explanations do not help business leaders avoid a future product flop.   But there are common lessons to these stories from which innovators, and marketers, can learn in order to do better in the future.  Especially when the new products are marketplace disrupters; or as they are often called, “game changers.”

Do you remember Segway?  The two wheeled transportation device came on the market with incredible fanfare in 2002. It was heralded as a game changer in how we all would mobilize.  Founders predicted sales would explode to 10,000 units per week, and the company would reach $1B in sales faster than ever in history.  But that didn’t happen.  Instead the company sold less than 10,000 units in its first 2 years,  and less than 24,000 units in its first 4 years.  What was initially a “really, really cool product” ended up a dud.

There were a lot of companies that experimented with Segways.  The U.S. Postal Service tested Segways for letter carriers. Police tested using them in Chicago, Philadelphia and D.C., gas companies tested them for Pennsylvania meter readers, and Chicago’s fire department tested them for paramedics in congested city center.  But none of these led to major sales. Segway became relegated to niche (like urban sightseeing) and absurd (like Segway polo) uses.

Segway tried to be a general purpose product. But no disruptive product ever succeeds with that sort of marketing.  As famed innovation guru Clayton Christensen tells everyone, when you launch a new product you have to find a set of unmet needs, and position the new product to fulfill that unmet need better than anything else.  You must have a very clear focus on the product’s initial use, and work extremely hard to make sure the product does the necessary job brilliantly to fulfill the unmet need.

Nobody inherently needed a Segway.  Everyone was getting around by foot, bicycle, motorcycle and car just fine.  Segway failed because it did not focus on any one application, and develop that market as it enhanced and improved the product.  Selling 100 Segways to 20 different uses was an inherently bad decision. What Segway needed to do was sell 100 units to a single, or at most 2, applications.

Segway leadership should have studied the needs deeply, and focused all aspects of the product, distribution, promotion, training, communications and pricing for that single (or 2) markets.  By winning over users in the initial market Segway could have made those initial users very loyal, outspoken customers who would recommend the product again and again – even at a $4,000 price.

Segway should have pioneered an initial application market that could grow.  Only after that could Segway turn to a second market.  The first market could have been using Segway as a golfer’s cart, or as a walking assist for the elderly/infirm, or as a transport device for meter readers.  If Segway had really focused on one initial market, developed for those needs, and won that market it would have started a step-wise program toward more applications and success. By thinking the general market would figure out how to use its product, and someone else would develop applications for specific market needs, Segway’s leaders missed the opportunity to truly disrupt one market and start the path toward wider success.

The Fire Phone had a great opportunity to grow which it missed.  The Fire Phone had several features making it great for on-line shopping.  But the launch team did not focus, focus, focus on this application.  They did not keep developing apps, databases and ways of using the product for retailing so that avid shoppers found the Fire Phone superior for their needs.  Instead the Fire Phone was launched as a mass-market device. Its retail attributes were largely lost in comparisons with other general purpose smartphones.

People already had Apple iPhones, Samsung Galaxy phones and Google Nexus phones.  Simultaneously, Microsoft was pushing for new customers to use Nokia and HTC Windows phones.  There were plenty of smartphones on the market. Another smartphone wasn’t needed – unless it fulfilled the unmet needs of some select market so well that those specific users would say “if you do …. and you need…. then you MUST have a FirePhone.”  By not focusing like a laser on some specific application – some specific set of unmet needs – the “cool” features of the Fire Phone simply weren’t very valuable and the product was easy for people to pass by.  Which almost everyone did, waiting for the iPhone 6 launch.

This was the same problem launching Google Glass.  Glass really caught the imagination of many tech reviewers.  Everyone I knew who put on Glass said it was really cool.  But there wasn’t any one thing Glass did so well that large numbers of folks said “I have to have Glass.”  There wasn’t any need that Glass fulfilled so well that a segment bought Glass, used it and became religious about wearing Glass all the time.  And Google didn’t improve the product in specific ways for a single market application so that users from that market would be attracted to buy Glass.  In the end, by trying to be a “cool tool” for everyone Glass ended up being something nobody really needed.  Exactly like Segway.

Microsoft recently launched its Hololens.  Again, a pretty cool gadget.  But, exactly what is the target market for Hololens?  If Microsoft proceeds down the road of “a cool tool that will redefine computing,” Hololens will likely end up with the same fate as Glass, Segway and Fire Phone.  Hololens marketing and development teams have to find the ONE application (maybe 2) that will drive initial sales, cater to that application with enhancements and improvements to meet those specific needs, and create an initial loyal user base.  Only after that can Hololens build future applications and markets to grow sales (perhaps explosively) and push Microsoft into a market leading position.

All companies have opportunities to innovate and disrupt their markets.  Most fail at this.  Most innovations are thrown at customers hoping they will buy, and then simply dropped when sales don’t meet expectations.  Most leaders forget that customers already have a way of getting their jobs done, so they aren’t running around asking for a new innovation.  For an innovation to succeed launchers must identify the unmet needs of an application, and then dedicate their innovation to meeting those unmet needs.  By building a base of customers (one at a time) upon which to grow the innovation’s sales you can position both the new product and the company as market leaders.