We all have a tendency to think that there is something inevitable about great innovations, but the fact is that timing is extremely important. If you launch a new invention, product or idea before the time is ripe, society will ignore it.

There may be several reasons for this:

• The necessarily infrastructure may be missing (hydrogen cars without hydrogen stations)
• The ideological climate may not allow it (selling vodka in Saudi Arabia)
• The entrepreneur does not have the marketing competences needed (marketing a high quality mobile phone with an old fashioned design to the in-crowd)
• Lack of funding (do you know a good venture capitalist, and can you convince her?)
• Bad luck (didn’t meet the right person at the right time)
• etc.

The electric Th!nk car is an innovation that has failed repeatedly because of bad timing:

• It was born during the oil crisis of 1974, which might count as a good timing, but shortly after the crisis was over, and Norway became an oil and gas nation.
• In the 1980’s green was in, but the entrepreneurs had a bad time finding the necessary funding, and when they did find it, they wasted it on one of their partners, Lotus.
• The company was saved by Ford, who believed it needed an electric car because of new strict regulations in California. However, when the zero-emission policy became less than zero due to strong lobbying from the automobile industry, Ford decided to sell Th!nk.
• It was bought by a Swiss company, apparently without the right competences and contacts, and Th!nk went bankrupt once again.

Now for the good luck: A Norwegian millionaire who has become rich due to the renewed interest in renewable energy (solar panels in this case) decides that Th!nk has to be brought back to Norway, and so he does.

And in a year were even George Bush has become an eco-warrior, the time may actually be right for a Norwegian electrical car.

I have written more about Th!nk and the company’s connection to Google over at Pandia.

See also Rannveig Røste: The innovation process of the Norwegian electric car Think – a case study (PDF)