Do you have any good examples of tech that was immediately embraced without any prior examples or failures to monetize? I'm having trouble thinking of any.
replyCDs were invented jointly by Philips and Sony and then sold successfully to the public. By 1991, they had overtaken cassette tape sales
replyNope [1]. Starting in the 70's, with:
reply> However, like many ideas far ahead of their time, the CD-ROM found few interested investors at first.
And then in 1975:
> Philips Electronics representatives visited Russell’s Battelle lab in the summer of 1975, and they discounted the entire premise of his work.
[1] http://www.computer-timeline.com/timeline/james-russel-compa...
DVD, then. Although that's sort of cheating since it's such a natural evolution from CDs -- it was clearly better than VHS and it didn't take any convincing for people to adopt them.
reply(you'll probably point to DIVX but that was an experiment with a terrible business model, not a technological failure)