Word: segway
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Fish and Bicycles The possibility that the segway will be viewed as simply a high-end toy, a jet ski on wheels, is one of Kamen's greatest concerns, especially after Sept. 11. He wants his machine taken seriously, as a serious solution to serious problems. That anxiety was one of the reasons he and his team decided to concentrate at first on major corporations, universities and government agencies--large, solid, established institutions--rather than dive straight into the consumer marketplace...
...Whether such institutions would embrace Segways, however, was an open question. Before last January's leak, Kamen had demoed his invention only when absolutely necessary, or for luminaries such as Steve Jobs and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. After the leak, he became even pickier. He entertained the Postmaster General, who was keen to put letter carriers on Segways, and the head of the National Parks Service, who wanted to do the same with park rangers and police. (Both are among Segway's first customers.) Kamen also stirred up interest at the Department of Defense, which was intrigued by the notion...
...approaching, Kamen began to let some others in. The Boston police department sent a clutch of cops to Manchester. The city of Atlanta sent a contingent of city planners. And Thanksgiving week, Kamen took his act to California. In one jam-packed day in Silicon Valley, he revealed the Segway to officials from San Francisco International Airport, the California department of transportation, the city of Palo Alto, Stanford University and Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers. Especially gratifying to Kamen was the reaction of Andy Grove, the chairman of Intel and, unlike so many Silicon Valley boosters, a bone-deep skeptic...
...asked Grove what he thought of the Segway as a business. "The consumer market is always harder," he said. "But when you think about it, the corporate market is almost unlimited. If the Postal Service and FedEx deploy this for all their carriers, the company will be busy for the next five years just keeping up with that demand...
...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...