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


	Sole Patrol: would-be sneaker reinventor Abel Hastings eyes the New Balance Triathlon Shoe.

IT'S 8:15 A.M. and we're on the road to New Balance's manufacturing facility in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Blair drives while Abel Hastings, a 29-year-old grad student in MIT's material science program, warms up his spiel on us. Hastings has a Mr. Peabodyesque amount of knowledge crammed into his head. When he speaks about the biomechanics of running, he uses terms like "injury modality" and "gait optimization."

"My idea is to investigate running- shoe design from the ground up, using biomechanics, physical modeling, and investigating new materials," Hastings says. "There's just been so much that hasn't made its way into the industry yet." In short, Hastings hopes New Balance will underwrite a study that could lead to reinventing the sneaker, perhaps by identifying superior impact-absorbing compounds for the soles.

Reinvent the sneaker—no biggie, right? As crazily ambitious as that sounds, Blair wants New Balance to hear Hastings out. The company has told him, he says, that if he and his whiz kids can find an alternative to EVA—the industry-standard foam used in the soles of running shoes, which gives them that cushy feel but breaks down rapidly, even when not in use—"then they'll give us a bunch of money."

Sitting in as Hastings makes his pitch to Edith Harmon—director of the Advanced Products Group, the running shoe giant's in-house R&D unit—it doesn't seem like Blair should have trouble lining up corporate sponsors. After all, the early experimental stages of product development—known in the industry as the "fuzzy front end"—can rapidly narrow a company's profit margins. In some cases, it can cost more to produce the first prototype than to bring a product to market.

"We have an internship program and we have our own R&D," says Harmon, "but what Kim gives us, above and beyond a way to contribute to higher education, is a cost-effective way to try out new concepts."

The hurdle Blair has to negotiate is this: In a field as highly competitive as sports equipment and apparel, no one wants to pay for innovations that their rivals can readily poach. Various federal guidelines, as well as MIT's own policies to retain rights to research patents created by students in the university's labs, make some sponsors reluctant to pony up the cash needed to develop bleeding-edge technology at CSI. "It's not just MIT," says Blair. "And it's not about who gets to publish the results. The industry moves so fast, the technology is in the market before anybody can really publish anything on it. So it's a question of who owns what, when, and for how long. And we can't always come to terms."

Michael Blenkarn, director of product development and new technologies at Arc'Teryx, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based maker of climbing harnesses, packs, and outdoor apparel, says it would be a shame if patent lawyers kept CSI from gaining momentum. "We already have enough lawyers making a mess of things in this industry," Blenkarn, 42, grouses half-jokingly.

He then voices a common lament of anyone over 35 in the biz. "Ever since the late 1970s, when manufacturing moved overseas, innovation has fallen off," he says. "Because all the tents are sewn by the same four factories now, once someone tries something, everyone else can just go to the trade show, see if they like it, and order up the same thing. You've got a tent with one million hanging lockers? Well, I'll make one with two million hanging lockers! It's just more of the same."

Paul Kramer, the 55-year-old cofounder and design director of the high-test gear company Mountain Hardwear, mostly agrees. "I think it's possible to design something and have someone else produce it, and still be innovative," he says. But when manufacturing moved overseas, startups in North America could no longer compete on price with stuff made in Taiwan. "When the cost of getting into something is low," Kramer notes, "everybody can get in, and when you have all these little guys competing, that's when you see innovation."

"The real innovators are always the ones who live and breathe it," adds Blenkarn, which is why CSI sounds promising to him—so long as Blair's "lead users" never forget that the wild is the best and final laboratory.

"There was this project in the UK," Blenkarn recalls, ending our conversation with a cautionary tale from the annals of gear development. "Some university got a big grant to build the world's most ergonomic backpack ever. Karrimor [a British pack maker] was going to commercialize it. And when the university came out with it, why, it was gorgeous! It looked like a frame pack based on the skeletal reflection of the human body. But no one had taken it on the trail, much less thrown it in with other bags on the back of a truck or an Indian bus." Blenkarn sighs. "Ends up, it was a real fucking expensive piece of schmoo."

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