Dean Kamen, inventor and founder of DEKA Research & Development Corp., at Segways headquarters in Bedford, NH. Around Kamen are Segway employees riding the new Segway i2.
Changing the world isn't easy. It's a lesson Dean Kamen, the guy who invented the Segway personal transporter, has learned the hard way. When he unveiled his self-balancing, battery-powered technological marvel (it seems a sin to call it a scooter) in 2001, he predicted that cities would banish cars from their congested hearts and wildly popular Segways would fill downtown pavements.
Or maybe not. That scenario isn't even remotely likely today. And Kamen, who chairs Segway's board, has been forced to adjust his vision. "We didn't realize that although technology moves very quickly, people's mind-set changes very slowly," he says. "People are very cautious, especially when it comes to the big issues."
Transportation, it appears, is one of those biggies. CEO James Norrod will say only that Segway has sold tens of thousands of personal transporters (PTs) and that sales are growing 50% annually. But it's obvious that Kamen's machine hasn't found much traction with consumers, even though 44 U.S. states allow the PTs on pavements. Segway has built expensive models for the commercial market, and more than 150 private and public security agencies globally are using them. And it just entered the Chinese market. But the innovation has proved to be far less than world changing.
Get ready for Round 2. Segway this week will roll out an upgraded $4,995 PT designed in part to leap "the chasm," marketers' term for the treacherous gap in a product's path from the first buyers to the mass market. The pager made the leap via doctors to the rest of us. Early adopters have snapped up their Segways. Now the firm has to sell everybody else on the idea. "It's a chicken-or-egg problem," says Klee Kleber, V.P. of marketing. "People won't buy it until their peers do, and their peers won't buy one until they buy it." He's betting that if Segway establishes itself in the security market, it will eventually win over cautious consumers.
The new model is another feat of engineering. It comes with a souped-up wireless key, which doubles as an alarm and a smart display module. But the real breakthrough is the ride. If the first Segway felt intuitive--lean forward to go forward, lean back to stop and reverse, twist your wrist to turn--the latest models (i2 and the off-road x2) respond as if they're controlled by mere thought. The secret is in the new control shaft, which has lost the steering grip and sways in synch with the rider to turn the device. The effect is akin to skiing on cement.
But will Segway's chasm-crossing strategy work? Geoffrey Moore, a managing director at TCG Advisors in San Mateo, Calif., whose book Crossing the Chasm helped shape Segway's strategy, doesn't think so. There's too much "pain" connected with its use, says Moore. He contends that consumers will worry--among other things--about issues of etiquette like where it could be acceptably ridden and parked. Although any one such concern is minor, together they have a multiplicative effect. "It's like Gulliver and the Lilliputians." Even the police and security market won't save it, says Moore, since it doesn't offer a unique solution to any mission-critical problem. "Segway," he believes, "is a product destined to live in the chasm forever."