This article explores the factors influencing entrepreneurial decisionmaking about the introduction of new technological processes in the gold mining companies of nineteenth century New Zealand. It attempts to estimate the significance of scientific discoveries to technological advance, and the influence of government, economic circumstances and patent laws. In this way, it seeks to explain the retardation of the introduction of cyaniding as a combination of scientific and expert doubt about the effects of cyanide, the entrepreneurial problem of distinguishing the one young swan among the ducklings, and the pricing policy of the patent owners. It indicates briefly the effects that the introduction of cyaniding had on the structure of the gold mining industry.