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Jim Currie |
Entrepreneurial Dominion
Sunny
Side Up The serial optimists at The Egg Factory are developing “transformational” products – from video-enabled floor mats to an anti-kidnap solution – each with $1 billion or more in market potential.
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Just
when you thought that the media clutter couldn’t get
any worse… when you thought it impossible to add to
the bombardment of messages from television, newspapers,
magazines, billboards, the Internet, giant digital
screens on the sides of buildings, and pocket-sized
images at point-of-sale retail displays… now comes The
Egg Factory, laying claim to the last domain of sensory
respite. The
floor. Yes,
the humble floor has advantages that other media lack.
“That’s what peoples’ eyes are focused on when
they walk around [in stores],” says COO Jim Currie.
The Egg Factory, an incubator of novel technologies and
products, is staking its claim, so to speak, on the
ground. The The
cost to advertisers will run about $1.30 to reach 1,000
viewers, says Currie. That compares to $16 per 1,000 for
television. Furthermore, messages can be incredibly
targeted. Someone visiting a Does
the world really need a talking, animated floor mat? Who
knows? Developing the Intellimat was, undoubtedly, a
risky proposition. First, the technology had to be
proved. Secondly, The Egg Factory still has to
demonstrate a demand for the product. But that’s the
company’s reason for being: It develops inherently
risky “transformational” ideas, ideally with $1
billion or more in market potential. As a specialist in
managing the uncertainties of the early-stage creative
process, the company hands off proven ideas to Fortune
500 companies or investor groups interested in growing
them into mature products. The
Egg Factory was founded by Ronald Blum, an optometrist
and inventor of the multi-focus eyeglass lens, who sold
his first company, Innotech, to Johnson & Johnson
for $135 million. Rather than build companies one at a
time, the hyper-entrepreneurial Blum set up The Egg
Factory as an innovation assembly line. His outfit
brainstorms ideas for new products, develops the
technology, and then sells, licenses or franchises the
innovations to larger companies. After
five years, the company has brought several products to
the brink of commercialization and beyond. Besides
Intellimat, which was unveiled recently to considerable
excitement at the Global Shop point-of-sale display
conference in Las Vegas, The Egg Factory has created The
Hearing Enhancement Company, which fine tunes hearing
much as eyeglasses improve vision; eVision, a product
that corrects for Presbyopia, an eye malfunction;
Plasmion Displays, a new flat-display technology; and
AgroShield, a polymer coating that protects plants from
freezing. Plus,
there are plenty more ideas in the pipeline. The most
innovative aspect of the Egg Factory, however, is not
any single invention but its business model. The company
doesn’t maintain a lavish R&D staff like Xerox’s
famous PARC facility or ATT’s old Bell Labs. Rather,
TEF has developed methodologies for originating cool,
consumer-focused ideas and then assembling resources
from around the world as needed to make them reality.
Core competencies, says Currie, include anticipating
consumer trends, designing elegant solutions, writing
patents that protect intellectual property, and putting
together the deals with other companies that can take
the products to market. The
soon-to-be-revealed PocketMate is a case study in The
Egg Factory method. Currie says he can’t describe the
product in detail because the patent protection hasn't
been issued yet, but the company has promoted the
product obliquely through a press release. The product,
the company promises, will meet the needs of consumers
by providing a “hassle free” means of storing
personal IDs, money, keys, credit cards and travel
documents -- with an optional Global Positioning System
(GPS) add-on to track the wearer’s whereabouts. The
idea originated during The Innovation Challenge, an
annual summer event in which The Egg Factory and The
Egg Factory also taps a prestigious Scientific Advisory
Board for ideas as well, but the idea for the PocketMate
came from one of the intern groups – inspired by a
series of highly publicized abductions. "Our
product will allow for the hiding away – the secreting
– of a GPS tracking device that will make it nearly
impossible for a kidnaper to figure out if the child has
one hidden,” says Currie. “It’s
transformational” in that it will relieve people from
the fear that loved ones – from parents with
Alzheimer’s to children at the amusement park –
might get lost. Having
designed the product, the company has enlisted the
Industrial and Automotive Products Division of Avery
Dennison, a Fortune 500 company, to help develop it,
Currie says. The Egg Factory provided the specs. Avery
Dennison brings to the table an expertise in
manufacturing, a knowledge of materials and an R&D
capability. The "Unlike
many corporate research and development departments or
university research programs, TEF is able to draw from a
remarkable number of resources across the world to
create unique, patented innovations,” Currie says.
“We can provide our global partners with the
[expertise] they need to get innovative products to
market quicker, at less cost and with reduced risks,
giving them a significant competitive advantage in the
marketplace."
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Find Out More About...
If you would like to sponsor a profile of your company on VA Newswire, contact the publisher at jim@vanewswire or by calling (804) 873-1543.
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