I got the information about iRobot from STeLA, so I went to listen to Colin Angle, Co-founder, chairman & CEO of iRobot in iRobot CEO Lecture at the New Otani Hotel, Tokyo on September 28, 2011.
He talked about his adventure in entrepreneurship after his graduation from MIT.
Nowadays, iRobot has 400 million in 2010 revenue, more than 700 employees located in Hong Kong, China, France, UK, India, and 3 offices in USA. They have shipped more than 1.5 billion dollars worth of robots.
He separated the timeline of his company into 3 phases: Technology development, Robot development, and Robot production.
He has inspiration to make cool technology. During the technology development, iRobot built cool robots. In the robot development, iRobot built many types of robot including Dinosaurs robot.
He also had many failed business models over time. But he and his company is still keep continuing until they built Roomba-an intelligent FloorVac.
First, because they did not know about how to clean. What they know was only cleaning home was a great application. So, they made a asymmetric strategic partnership to learn how to clean and manufacture using OPM. The concept is that the large company has money, channel, and market knowledge, while small company, like iRobot at that time, has cool technology, and innovation. In fact, the name they gave to Roomba at the first time was "CyberSuck", and then, "DustPuppy", but they are not good to be a commercial product, thus they outsourced the company to create the name, which is "Roomba". One luck they got is the advertisement. Because of the cool innovation, the iRobot were published in many famous media such as Popular Science, National Geographic, etc.
Colin showed the Revised Technology Adoption Life Cycle. The innovators and early adaptor periods are not too hard since the innovation lovers will buy your new cool technological products, but to become the mass product, many factors are needed.
Engineering VS Marketing
Colin described about the vision of engineers and marketers. They are different.
There are 3 rules to make the product:
1. Don't get struck on Oriental carpet fringe.
2. Simple is good.
3. Reliable and Dependable is everything.
iRobot Ava
The new idea, iRobot is doing is the Robot Enabled Home. To be the center of the elements of a home that takes care of everyone, they built the prototype of iRobot Ava. Ava is a Human Interface Robot (HIR). The controller interface is Apple iPad.
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