Letter From Silicon Valley
Burlingame, Calif. -Most of the business press these days is spellbound by
The iPhone, when it's available, may well be a dandy product. But anyone who's really serious about understanding innovation should disconnect from the hard-to-replicate iPhone launch and spend time studying the career of long-time inventor Dean Kamen.
Kamen holds several hundred U.S. and foreign patents. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of the "ambulatory infusion pump"--a way of administering drugs that can move with a patient. Countless patients and their caregivers have benefited from the pump and the other ideas it inspired.
What drives Kamen, 55, is the satisfaction of solving a genuine problem. He doesn't try to analyze markets or predict revenues. He looks for stumbling blocks: The debilitating, unglamorous problems that stop people from going about their daily life. For most of his career, Kamen has hoped that people won't have to use his inventions. "You don't say to someone, 'I can't wait for you have to end-stage renal failure,' " so they can try out his latest dialysis technology, Kamen says wryly.
Kamen's one big effort to develop a product that would create buzz has yet to really take hold, five years after its launch. That was the Segway "personal transporter," or what the rest of the world calls a motorized scooter. Kamen still insists there's a need for the Segway: City streets are clogged with traffic and pollution, and Segways can reduce both, Kamen contends. But in spite of the energetic efforts of some of the Valley's finest venture capitalists, most people are happy to make do with cars, bicycles or their own foot power.
Kamen has been confronting problems head-on since grade school. At the time, one of the biggest problems he had was a familiar one: He hated to make his bed. His mother insisted. He analyzed the problem: He needed a way to straighten the sheets and covers automatically. Kamen affixed pulleys to the corners of his bedclothes and strung them with ropes. By standing at the foot of his bed, all he needed to do was tug on the ropes and the bed would make itself. "It was a great invention," he says, with satisfaction.
School frustrated Kamen. He focused instead on building things, including lighting systems for everything from museums to rock bands. His older brother Barton, in medical school, complained about challenges of delivering drugs to patients, including premature babies. Dean got to work. He invented a pump that delivered precise doses of medicine at precise intervals. "We put it in an isolet for tiny babies," Kamen recalls. "Then someone said, 'Bet you could stick it on a belt.' " Kamen soon delivered the first portable insulin pump for treating diabetics.
Kamen started a company to manufacture and sell medical pumps, but his heart wasn't in running a business. In 1982, he sold the company to Baxter Healthcare. He continued to work for Baxter and helped build its portable dialysis machine for people with kidney failure. Hundreds of thousands help patients every day.
He wound up starting an invention business: DEKA (for Dean Kamen) Research & Development, which is based in Manchester, N.H., and employs a couple hundred engineers and scientists on a broad portfolio of devices. Among their inventions: the iBOT wheelchair, which climbs over curbs (and was the core technology underlying the Segway), intravascular stents and irrigation pumps used in medical procedures, to name a few.
I asked Kamen what he believed was his team's "core competency." Building pumps? Fluid flow technology?
He scoffed at the question. "Oh, that's all business-speak that people use to make things look consistent in hindsight," he says. "We think we work hard. We try to understand fundamental science, and we try to stay current with technology."
And he looks for problems.
About 15 years ago, Kamen was bemoaning how few American students were interested in technology and invention. He started an engineer's version of the 4H Club, a nonprofit organization called FIRST which hosts robot-building competitions for high school students. The initial FIRST competition took place in a New Hampshire school gym in 1992; since then 100,000 kids have taken part around the world.
More recently, Kamen got interested in the need to provide clean water and electricity to villages in the developing world. "Now here's a real problem!" he says with relish. To solve it, Kamen turned to a very old technological idea--the Sterling Engine, which uses an external source to heat gas contained in a chamber; pistons move as the gas heats and cools.
Kamen says his improved power generators and water-purification machines are rugged enough and affordable enough for even remote villages. Two villages in Bangladesh are experimenting with the machines now, which run entirely on cow dung. Kamen has put tens of millions of dollars of his own money into developing the equipment--not because he's looking for a profit, but because he wants to solve a problem. "Now, there are three entrepreneurs running these machines," essentially establishing a mini power company for a village, he reports.
The final constant in the Kamen equation is patience. "It took 15 years for the diabetes pumps to take hold--and 20 years before the government started reimbursing for them," he says. FIRST has been in operation for 15 years and is finally getting worldwide attention. Segway? Still in its infancy, Kamen says. "The 'ah-has!' happen in an instant," he says. Winning acceptance in the marketplace, however, seems to take a decade or two--even when the need is palpable.
So here's to the inventions that so many in our community need: wheelchairs that let the disabled venture confidently onto a grassy field for a picnic; dialysis machines that quietly wash poison from a body overnight; low-cost machines that can make dirty water clean or power lights with cow dung.
I will be discussing these and other topics with Dean Kamen onstage on Feb. 8 at the Computer Museum in Mountain View, Calif. (The event is hosted by the not-for-profit Churchill Club.) Tickets are $70; the only pay Kamen and I get for the evening is a T-shirt. Join us for a discussion about the nature of invention and the kinds of problems that still need to be solved.
Burlingame, Calif. -
Most of the business press these days is spellbound by
The iPhone, when it's available, may well be a dandy product. But anyone who's really serious about understanding innovation should disconnect from the hard-to-replicate iPhone launch and spend time studying the career of long-time inventor Dean Kamen.
Kamen holds several hundred U.S. and foreign patents. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of the "ambulatory infusion pump"--a way of administering drugs that can move with a patient. Countless patients and their caregivers have benefited from the pump and the other ideas it inspired.
What drives Kamen, 55, is the satisfaction of solving a genuine problem. He doesn't try to analyze markets or predict revenues. He looks for stumbling blocks: The debilitating, unglamorous problems that stop people from going about their daily life. For most of his career, Kamen has hoped that people won't have to use his inventions. "You don't say to someone, 'I can't wait for you have to n-stage renal failure,' " so they can try out his latest dialysis technology, Kamen says wryly.
Kamen's one big effort to develop a product that would create buzz has yet to really take hold, five years after its launch. That was the Segway "personal transporter," or what the rest of the world calls a motorized scooter. Kamen still insists there's a need for the Segway: City streets are clogged with traffic and pollution, and Segways can reduce both, Kamen contends. But in spite of the energetic efforts of some of the Valley's finest venture capitalists, most people are happy to make do with cars, bicycles or their own foot power.
Kamen has been confronting problems head-on since grade school. At the time, one of the biggest problems he had was a familiar one: He hated to make his bed. His mother insisted. He analyzed the problem: He needed a way to straighten the sheets and covers automatically. Kamen affixed pulleys to the corners of his bedclothes and strung them with ropes. By standing at the foot of his bed, all he needed to do was tug on the ropes and the bed would make itself. "It was a great invention," he says, with satisfaction.
School frustrated Kamen. He focused instead on building things, including lighting systems for everything from museums to rock bands. His older brother Barton, in medical school, complained about challenges of delivering drugs to patients, including premature babies. Dean got to work. He invented a pump that delivered precise doses of medicine at precise intervals. "We put it in an isolet for tiny babies," Kamen recalls. "Then someone said, 'Bet you could stick it on a belt.' " Kamen soon delivered the first portable insulin pump for treating diabetics.
Kamen started a company to manufacture and sell medical pumps, but his heart wasn't in running a business. In 1982, he sold the company to Baxter Healthcare. He continued to work for Baxter and helped build its portable dialysis machine for people with kidney failure. Hundreds of thousands help patients every day.
He wound up starting an invention business: DEKA (for Dean Kamen) Research & Development, which is based in Manchester, N.H., and employs a couple hundred engineers and scientists on a broad portfolio of devices. Among their inventions: the iBOT wheelchair, which climbs over curbs (and was the core technology underlying the Segway), intravascular stents and irrigation pumps used in medical procedures, to name a few.
I asked Kamen what he believed was his team's "core competency." Building pumps? Fluid flow technology?
He scoffed at the question. "Oh, that's all business-speak that people use to make things look consistent in hindsight," he says. "We think we work hard. We try to understand fundamental science, and we try to stay current with technology."
And he looks for problems.
About 15 years ago, Kamen was bemoaning how few American students were interested in technology and invention. He started an engineer's version of the 4H Club, a nonprofit organization called FIRST which hosts robot-building competitions for high school students. The initial FIRST competition took place in a New Hampshire school gym in 1992; since then 100,000 kids have taken part around the world.
More recently, Kamen got interested in the need to provide clean water and electricity to villages in the developing world. "Now here's a real problem!" he says with relish. To solve it, Kamen turned to a very old technological idea--the Sterling Engine, which uses an external source to heat gas contained in a chamber; pistons move as the gas heats and cools.
Kamen says his improved power generators and water-purification machines are rugged enough and affordable enough for even remote villages. Two villages in Bangladesh are experimenting with the machines now, which run entirely on cow dung. Kamen has put tens of millions of dollars of his own money into developing the equipment--not because he's looking for a profit, but because he wants to solve a problem. "Now, there are three entrepreneurs running these machines," essentially establishing a mini power company for a village, he reports.
The final constant in the Kamen equation is patience. "It took 15 years for the diabetes pumps to take hold--and 20 years before the government started reimbursing for them," he says. FIRST has been in operation for 15 years and is finally getting worldwide attention. Segway? Still in its infancy, Kamen says. "The 'ah-has!' happen in an instant," he says. Winning acceptance in the marketplace, however, seems to take a decade or two--even when the need is palpable.
So here's to the inventions that so many in our community need: wheelchairs that let the disabled venture confidently onto a grassy field for a picnic; dialysis machines that quietly wash poison from a body overnight; low-cost machines that can make dirty water clean or power lights with cow dung.
I will be discussing these and other topics with Dean Kamen onstage on Feb. 8 at the Computer Museum in Mountain View, Calif. (The event is hosted by the not-for-profit Churchill Club.) Tickets are $70; the only pay Kamen and I get for the evening is a T-shirt. Join us for a discussion about the nature of invention and the kinds of problems that still need to be solved.
http://www.forbes.com/home/columnists/2007/01/28/segway-iphone-gadgets-tech-cz_ec_0129valleyletter.html
