A great deal of'innovation failure' can be attributed to ineffective implementation, rather than failure of the innovation itself. Ex-ternal agencies such as technology diffusion agencies (TDAs) have been created to assist organisations to implement innovation successfully, but there has been little empirical research investigating their roles. This paper presents a longitudinal case study of failed innovation implementation, and highiights in particular the role that technology diffusion agencies can play to prevent such failure in future cases. Results indícate the importance of changes in organisational factors such as training, climate, and management support during the implementation process in predicting outcomes, and imply a role forTDAs in assisting with both technical and non-technical aspects of innovation implementation.