Word: kamen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...past three months, Kamen has allowed TIME behind the veil of secrecy as he and his team grappled with the questions that they will confront--about everything from safety and pricing to the challenges of launching a product with the country at war and the economy in recession. Some of their answers were smooth and assured; others less polished. But one thing was clear. As Kamen sees it, all these issues will quickly fade if the question most people ask about the Segway...
...world of technology has never been short of eccentrics and obsessives, of rich, brilliant oddballs with strange habits and stranger hobbies. But even in this crowd, Dean Kamen stands out. The 50-year-old son of a comic-book artist, he is a college dropout, a self-taught physicist and mechanical engineer with a handful of honorary doctorates, a multimillionaire who wears the same outfit for every occasion: blue jeans, a blue work shirt and a pair of Timberland boots. With the accent of his native Long Island, he speaks slowly, passionately--and endlessly. "If you ask Dean the time...
...patient entrepreneur would revel in that assessment. But Kamen is a man running short on patience. For him, conquering the corporate market is merely a prelude to the battle to come. "The consumer market is where the big money is," says Michael Schmertzler, a Credit Suisse First Boston managing director and, with Doerr, Segway's other major financial backer. "But this is about more than money for Dean. Pardon the cliche, but he really does want to change the world...
With the Segway, Kamen plans to change the world by changing how cities are organized. To Kamen's way of thinking, the problem is the automobile. "Cities need cars like fish need bicycles," he says. Segways, he believes, are ideal for downtown transportation. Unlike cars, they are cheap, clean, efficient, maneuverable. Unlike bicycles, they are designed specifically to be pedestrian friendly. "A bike is too slow and light to mix with trucks in the street but too large and fast to mix with pedestrians on the sidewalk," he argues. "Our machine is compatible with the sidewalk. If a Segway hits...
...Kamen isn't so naive as to underestimate America's long-standing romance with the automobile. ("I love cars too," he says. "Just not when I'm downtown.") And he is well aware that uprooting the vast urban infrastructure that supports cars, from parking garages to bridges and tunnels, won't happen soon. Which is why he has pinned his greatest hopes not on the U.S. but abroad, especially in the developing world. At a meeting with Jobs a year ago, the Apple co-founder proclaimed, in typically hyperbolic fashion, "If enough people see this machine, you won't have...