Actually, It Is Rocket Science

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Outside Online April 2002

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The Big Idea: CASE STUDY #3: Inside a High-Tech Skunk Works
Actually, It Is Rocket Science


	CSI Chief Kim Blair—with the Mavic Cosmic Wheel—braves the Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel.

IT'S NOT QUITE the Manhattan Project—they're splitting carabiners, not atoms—but Okal and Graham's experiment is one of about half a dozen or so currently being explored at the MIT Center for Sports Innovation, an independent, nonprofit, multidisciplinary skunk works that promises to generate some serious light—and heat—for the $18 billion outdoor and sports equipment biz.

CSI was launched quietly in August 1999 with the goal, according to its mission statement, of developing "new technology and products which enhance all aspects of the sporting experience. The idea is to link the expertise of MIT faculty, the passion of MIT students, and the experience and insight of corporate sponsors to create a dynamic environment for product development education with a clear focus on end-use applications." Which is another way of saying, now that the space race is over, CSI is there to make sure MIT's aeronautical and astronautical—or "aero-astro"—engineering students can get jobs when they graduate.

Here's how it works: Sports gear and apparel companies provide donations (in money, equipment, or both) iRn exchange for specific research or product testing. In the process, they gain access to sophisticated facilities like the Technology Lab for Advanced Composites (Okal's torture chamber) and CSI's Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel. Thus CSI gives companies that don't have the cash flow of Nike—which in 1996 built its own $1.5 million, 12,500-square-foot, 25-person-strong Nike Sports Research Lab in Beaverton, Oregon—the opportunity to complement their R&D efforts without having to construct labs that might turn out to be money pits.

At present, CSI has a modest annual operating budget of $100,000 and negotiates fees paid by corporate sponsors on a case-by-case basis—$15,000 minimum for an undergraduate research project, $30,000 for a graduate project—making it affordable even for bootstrapping entrepreneurs. Unlike other schools that only test products, CSI puts the imaginations of MIT's wunderkinder to work for its sponsors—upward of 20 undergraduate and graduate students each term, whose "job" is to solve problems and come up with innovations. As a fringe benefit, corporate sponsors get to tap into MIT's tenured big brains in engineering and physics, as well as black arts like management science, human cognition, and niche marketing. For its trouble, MIT gets cash for the research as well as bragging rights and patents to whatever CSI's students create.

Great as this sounds—everybody wins!—it's still a heck of a lot to pull off. To manage it all, MIT has hired an army of one: Kim Blair. Born and raised in Grand Island, Nebraska, Blair, 43, is a certified gearhead. He completed his master's thesis on the "fatigue behavior" of aluminum alloys—the metal used in carabiners—before spending three summers and two semesters, circa 1987-1990, at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. There he worked on designs for the Mars lander and the space shuttle, en route to getting a Ph.D. in aero-astro from Purdue University in 1992. He's also a jock. A member of Team Psycho, a New England triathlete club (he's completed 70 triathlons), he kickstarted his honeymoon by competing in Hawaii's Ironman Triathlon. He sees CSI as "a really nice way to combine my profession and my hobby.

"One of the best perks," he adds with a grin, "is we get to try the latest stuff."

One day, Blair hopes, CSI will have an operating budget of $300,000, a staff of three (or hey—five!), and maybe even a building of its own, like its very rich cousin, the 17-year-old MIT Media Lab. In 2001 the Media Lab had $36 million in corporate lucre at its disposal to play around with what its promo brochure calls "digital technologies [that] enhance the ways people think, express, and communicate ideas." If that's ever going to happen to CSI, Blair first has to prove that his center can pay for itself. "We may be not-for-profit," he says, "but at MIT not-for-profit means not-for-loss, too."

Blair, who works on contract for MIT as a research engineer (he's not a faculty member), was given three years by the university to get CSI up and running. So far he has attracted projects and funding from Trek, Lange, Mavic, and New Balance, among other gear companies, but the money has not exactly rolled in. In CSI's first two years, Blair raised roughly $40,000 from the private sector and relied on university funds to keep his CSI students busy. This year, he's got four new sponsorship proposals pending for graduate projects, which could bring in $120,000. If he closes those deals, he'll break even for 2002. If not, CSI may have to go back to the shop for more fine-tuning before it wows the marketplace.

Blair is optimistic that his third year will be charmed, but he's also trying to stay flexible. "I've been able to create all this on a shoestring," he says, but "it's still a one-person show." He stresses that many projects, like Okal's 'biner breaking, are independently conceived operations; corporate sponsor or no, students get course credit for their work.

"My primary focus will always be the educational mission," he says. "That's what the Center does best—it gives students a great hands-on experience." Going for the Next Big Thing "will never be the live-or-die focus." But, he laughs, "I sure wouldn't mind."

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