3 of the best Gadgets they said would never take off, but did

Let’s be clear on this; people get things wrong. For example; look at the new Qatari world cup stadium and think about precisely which part of the female anatomy it reminds you of – that’s an example of an error! Asking for banned substances and talking about gay sex in the back of a Ford Fiesta with a dubious gentleman filming you when you happen to be the chairman of Co-op bank AND a Methodist priest: that’s an error too. If you let Joey Essex near your watch then that’s also an error. However, errors are wonderful. Not for the people that make them but for everyone else. Honestly, the most boring stories at a dinner are not the ones where everything works out brilliantly for everyone involved. That pretty lady or gentlemen will be bored stiff by your tales of success but they will be putty in your hands if you tell them a funny story about failure. We here at TGJ would like to celebrate other peoples failures and look at those who got it wrong when passing up great gadgets.

The first has to be Sir Alan Sugar and the iPod. Now, Sir Sugar runs the ‘Bloody Apprentice’ and makes guest appearances on Cassette Boys YouTube videos (have a look, you won’t regret it!). We admit that even though he votes labour and, from the state of his face fungus, clearly has not quite figured out what a razor is, there is a lot to admire about Alan Sugar. A great businessman and quite a funny guy BUT this was a quote from him about the (then) newly released iPod; ‘Next Christmas the iPod will be Kaput’. 220 million copies later suggests it was a little bit more successful than that…. Don’t give up hope Lord Sugar: there’s always next year!

The second is an odd one and strictly speaking is not a gadget; Paul Buchheit was an engineer at Google and before 2004 was famous for helping to come up with the company’s informal motto of ‘Don’t be evil’. Clearly the message did not reach their tax department, but we digress. Anyway Mr Buchheit took advantage of the companies ’20 per cent time’ allowance to work on something different. He worked on it for two and a half years. He worked on an email and online data storage software to be precise; he called it ‘Google Mail’ or ‘Gmail’ for short. However, an executive at Google was very unimpressed and said ‘this will destroy our brand, this will destroy our company’. Gmail went on to ‘destroy’ Google to the tune of 425 million active users in 2012 making it the most widely used web-based email provider in history.

Another gadget that took a while to take off was to do with coffee. In 1976 a Nestle employee came up with the concept of capsule coffee and marketed it in Switzerland. He promptly went bust and was told it would ‘never ever work’. He then tried again in 1988 and it became a bit more successful. It signed contracts with Krupp, Siemens and others (with the help of Jean-Paul Gaillard) and it took off. In 1996 it patented its use of capsule coffee and Nespresso and Eric Favre have never looked back. In 2006 the Clooney himself became its global ambassador and as of last year revenue is $3bn. Not bad for a latte.

By George Hambro Rabben