There is almost no such thing as a failed innovation
In a series of blog posts, Marco Coolen offers a glimpse into his work as a Dutch and European patent attorney at AOMB.
Published on September 20, 2026
Marco, a patent attorney at AOMB since 2013, shares his expertise on IO+ about patents—how they work, why they matter, and when they lose their value.
Entrepreneurs are often surprisingly harsh on their own innovations.
A new product doesn’t catch on right away? Then the idea apparently wasn’t any good. A prototype turns out not to be suitable for the market it was intended for? Then the project gets shelved. And when customers don’t immediately embrace it, the conclusion is quickly reached that the innovation has failed.
But the history of innovation tells a very different story. Many of the technologies that later became enormous successes actually began as solutions to problems they ultimately didn’t solve at all.
Take celluloid, for example. At the end of the nineteenth century, a practical problem arose. Billiard balls were made of ivory, and that material was becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. Manufacturers therefore began searching for an alternative. Celluloid was developed as a substitute for ivory and initially seemed to offer exactly that.
On paper, it looked promising. In practice, it fell short. The material was unstable, prone to warping, and, on top of that, highly flammable. Not exactly the kind of properties you’d want for a relaxing evening of billiards. If you look purely at its original application, you might conclude that the project wasn’t really a success.
But the story didn’t end there. Because while one group focused mainly on what celluloid couldn’t do well, others saw something different. They didn’t see a billiards ball. They saw a new material with unique properties—one that was lightweight, moldable, and could be produced in large quantities.
This led to entirely new applications. First in photography. Then in the film industry. What began as an attempt to replace a billiards ball grew into a technology that laid the foundation for a completely new way to capture images and tell stories. The technology itself hardly changed. The application changed everything.
You see that pattern strikingly often. Innovations rarely fail because the technology is worthless. Much more often, it turns out that the initial market wasn’t the right one. The first customer wasn’t the right one. Or the initial problem simply wasn’t the one for which the technology proved most suitable.
Entrepreneurs run into this regularly, too. They develop a solution for one specific application and become disappointed when that market doesn’t respond as hoped. The idea then fades into the background, while the real opportunity might be just around the corner.
That is precisely why it’s wise to take a step back every now and then. To look not only at what an innovation does, but also at where it can create value. Sometimes a technology turns out to be much more interesting in a sector you never initially considered.
The history of celluloid shows that innovation rarely follows a straight line. An invention often starts at point A and eventually ends up at point Z. Along the way, it’s not always the technology that changes, but rather the understanding of what that technology is suited for.
That’s why the most important question isn’t always: Does my innovation work? Sometimes the better question is: Where does my innovation work? And that difference could very well be the beginning of a completely new industry.
The World of Patents
With the help of Dutch and European patent attorney Marco Coolen (AOMB), we can better understand the world of patents. How do they work, why are they important, and when do they lose their usefulness?