The Segway Story; A Failed Innovation

Segway was supposed to be a multibillion Trillion dollar company by now, everyone is supposed to be riding Segway to the market, or the mall, maybe to the office but it isn’t so, so what happened?

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Segway was meant to be the technology of the year with its purpose being to reduce cost of fuel by cars, ease transportation and prevent traffic. Steve Jobs believed in this project and offered it the inventor $63 million for 10 percent of the company but the inventor Dean Kamen turned it down. It is further believed that Jobs decided to advise the inventor for six months free. “You have a product so revolutionary, you’ll have no problem selling it”. This were words of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos when he took a look at Dean Kamen Segway. John Doerr, who successfully invested in Google also pumped in as much as $80 Million into the invention saying that “it would be the fastest company ever to reach $1 billion” also, “it would become more important than the internet.” Dean Kamen was regarded as the Thomas Edison of the 20th century, he had recorded a lot of breakthrough in his previous invention. He invented a portable dialysis machine which was named the invention of the year, he also created a portable drug infusion pump which was regarded a success, so It will not be a mistake to say that Dean Kamen is a successful inventor.

Kamen was expecting that 10,000 Segway will be sold a week by the end of 2002 but it only sold 30,000 Segway units at the end of 6 years according to Forbes. Why did this happen?

A Product, not a Complete Solution

Even after the high expectation from the public and the price of the Segway two wheeled, self-balancing battery electric vehicle, the product was not a complete a solution. The Segway was meant to be a personal vehicle to displace cars and bikes as well as reduce the amount spent on fuel but those who bought it had problems with which lane they are to ride on, either on the road, streets, or on pedestrian lanes. Also, they had problems when they got to their destination as there was no place to park to park their Scooters.

The World Wasn’t Ready for It

According to Peter Shankman, he described his first experience as much fun but later stated having problems with the police since they did not know what to do with it. Sometimes they said he could not go around with his Segway scooter. Bezos mentioned in his interview after saying “You have a product so revolutionary, you’ll have no problem selling it”, he said “Are people going to be allowed to use it?” and Bezos was right. The world wasn’t prepare for it. It had to be taken to a corridor before it could be parked, it was heavy to lift, as it weighed about a 100 pounds.

Too Expensive for a Revolutionary Invention

The price of a Segway unit was sold at $5000, the amount it cost to buy a fairly used car. This price was exorbitant for an innovation that had no specific target and no proper solution. People didn’t want to spend as much as $5000 to buy a product that wasn’t allowed on the road or on pedestrian walkways. It was of no essence getting it.

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A lot of innovations have come to stay, so many are able to accomplish this because they are opened and ready to collaborate with other investors and brains. The success of so many innovation came after several testing which should have been done by segway before lunch.

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What do you think about Segway's failure and do you think the failure was not on the part of the inventors?

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