Helping Others Go Vertical

Innovation in Entrepreneurship - A Case Study on Keen Mobility

by Meri Gruber

Keen Mobility is a story of innovation, invention and entrepreneurship. Innovation is often focused on inventions and new products, but innovation is also a new way of thinking about conventional wisdom. Jeffrey Phillips wrote an insightful post "Innovation, Invention and Entrepreneurs", defining innovation as "a new idea that is put into valuable or profitable action." What is so wonderful about the Keen Mobility story is how Vail Blackwell Horton and Jerry Carleton combined innovation, invention and entrepreneurship to deliver value for a large, underserved population and create a profitable, growing business.

Keen Mobility was founded by Vail Blackwell Horton and Jerry Carleton. Vail and Jerry were college roommates at the University of Portland (UP). Vail, born without legs, had been using artificial legs to walk but the crutches he needed to use with the artificial legs were destroying his shoulders. He wanted to find a better way to keep walking - for him, and for others. Vail went in search of a way to fulfill this mission.

Vail brought an idea for a new type of crutch - one with shock absorbing technology - to a group of engineering students at UP. He suggested the engineers try to build a working prototype for their senior project. They agreed, and the student engineers went to work. The concept worked! The engineering students successfully built a working prototype, and Vail and Jerry realized their concept could fly. They set off to start a company to build a product that would help Vail stay vertically mobile, and help others do so as well.

Full of enthusiasm, Jerry and Vail looked at each other across the table of their rented student digs in North Portland, asking what all entrepreneurs ask at this point, "What now?" They had zero idea how to launch a company and needed expertise and funding. Financing is tough at the best of times, but this was in 2001, in the midst of the dot com and telecom bust.

Jerry and Vail called the UP Center for Entrepreneurship. They also set up every meeting, coffee and lunch they could with people they could learn from. By approaching people for mentorship, not funding, they built relationships for the long haul. The company wasn’t bankable at this time, but many of these early contacts later became investors.

The UP Center for Entrepreneurship encouraged the team to enter UP's Entrepreneurs Challenge and other business competitions. By April 2002 they had won the $10,000 first prize in the UP competition and third place in Portland Business Journal's business plan competition, winning $35,000 in cash and services. UP sent them to more competitions around the U.S. where they consistently finished in the top three.

The team also looked for other sources of funding. They wrote a successful proposal to UP to fund their trade show booth and travel costs. They contacted the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). With support from the Lemelson Foundation, NCIIA awards approximately two million dollars in grants annually to college students or recent graduates of member institutions. Keen was awarded a $10,000 NCIIA grant funding prototype development and provisional patent filing costs.

A great partnership, Vail focused on creating the product and the vision for company while Jerry continued fundraising efforts. The VC environment continued to be difficult. Jerry "took every meeting he could get." Innovation continued. They partnered with universities where student engineering teams would apply to NCIIA to prototype Keen's new product ideas. Frugality reigned supreme. In one example, now part of the company's lore, Jerry opened the company bank account at US Bank because of their "Five Star Service Guarantee" that said if you waited in line for more than five minutes, they credited $5 to your account. Jerry made sure to pick the longest line in the bank every time.

The business plan competitions were great for press, as was their compelling mission to keep Vail and others vertically mobile. Jerry recalls, "We were never in crisis capital mode, we had options." When they went out to raise their first preferred round, they "couldn't stomach" the VC terms, so they turned to angel investors. Jerry was on the road, once meeting in six different states in 48 hours. Jerry had the mindset, "every person was a potential investor, or knew a potential investor." Jerry hit the mark - the company's first preferred round was oversubscribed.

Innovation also comes from understanding your market. One of Keen Mobility's best selling products lines today, Tru-ReliefTM foam, started as an important addition to their shock absorbing crutch. When looking for a solution for shock absorbing underarm foam, they discovered a superb foam that could also relieve pressure points. Pressure sores can cause severe discomfort to wheelchair users and can be life threatening.

A crutch with shock absorbing technology was the company inspiration but ultimately represented only a small market. The team realized they needed a full suite of "world-class products focused on safety, mobility, and comfort for the disabled, elderly and injured." They now focused their efforts on building out their product line.

The team went on to close their Series B preferred, again oversubscribed, with about half coming from Series A investors, and half new investors. In 2005, Keen added their first intuitional investor, Crobern Management Partnership, after the Series B close. Jerry describes Crobern as "a venture firm with an angel attitude." Crobern's focus in health care, and their ability to provide value beyond the dollars, has been a great fit with Keen. Jerry points to their early years as an important training ground. "The training we received in the lean years gave us such a respect for the money we raised." Needing only half of the first tranche, the company gained credibility with their new investor when they bought CD's with the extra money.

Keen Mobility today has "over $2.5 million in annual sales, 25 different product lines, more than $1.7 million in capital, and 12 employees. Keen Mobility has also been recognized by the Oregon Entrepreneurs Forum as one of the three most successful growth-stage companies in the state, ranked number 30 on the 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies List, and was placed on the Governor's Honor Role for Employers of People with Disabilities."

Keen Mobility has been named in 2008 and in 2009 to Inc.'s annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America and to the Portland Business Journal's Oregon 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies list three consecutive years. Vail and Jerry were both named to the "Top Forty Under Forty" list by the Portland Business Journal.

Vail holds numerous honors, including his appointment to the Secretary of State Advisory Committee for Worldwide Disability Policy and was named an "Oregon Healthcare Hero" by Senator Gordon Smith on the floor of the US Senate. Vail is also founder and chairman of Incight Foundation, dedicated to empowering people with disabilities through education, employment, networking and independence.

Jerry, who from year two was amazingly attending law school at night, was admitted to the Oregon Bar in 2007 and joined Bullivant Houser Bailey PC. "Having a real life case study to immediately apply my classroom lessons was an incredible opportunity." Jerry's hard won lessons in founding and growing Keen Mobility inspired him to "pay that forward, taking companies into and through the trenches." He continues to be part of Keen Mobility as a Director and Officer of the company.

Vail and Jerry's story, the story of Keen Mobility, is a story of innovation, invention and entrepreneurship. From Vail's initial inspiration and invention, they used creativity, ingenuity, dedication and hard work to grow their company. What Vail and Jerry show us is that innovation is a mindset, that when confronted with challenges, new ideas can change the game.


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Meri Gruber is a leading expert on business execution. She blogs on the intersection of innovation and business execution at www.competingonexecution.com

The Dream Catalog

by Drew Boyd

For many companies, the catalog of products is the strongest statement of brand positioning a company can make. It is your arsenal of commercialization. So imagine you could peek into the future and see a copy of your company's product catalog five years from now. What would it look like? What if you could design it now? What would you put into it? These are the questions that confront you when you use a clever innovation tool called the Dream Catalog.

The Dream Catalog is a hypothetical company catalog from the future...well into the future, beyond the next business cycle. It is far into the future so that it captures the innovative thinking and imagination of today's managers. It stretches a company's thinking about its future, and it provokes a healthy discussion about possible company direction. A good Dream Catalog causes tension.

A Dream Catalog helps a company in several ways. It sets direction. It suggests how the company is going to add and remove products from the line over time. It forces the marketing team to reconcile product line strategy. It provides placeholders for new discoveries, inventions, and even acquisitions. It provides a sense of prioritization of what should be developed and in what order. It can even help forecast revenues.

Best of all - it rewards and encourages innovation. The Dream Catalog serves as the focal point for company-wide innovation efforts. Employees strive to come up with product and service ideas that "make it" into the Dream Catalog. As the catalog takes shape, employees see how their future is taking shape. It guides their innovation efforts even more. Leaders can use the catalog as a motivational tool. "Let's turn this dream into reality...for our customers and our future." A good Dream Catalog creates excitement and a sense of purpose.

I teach MBA students how to create a Dream Catalog in a full credit course called "Applied Marketing Innovation." Here is a quick snapshot of how to do it. Create a slew of new product embodiments over your current product line as well as products in your industry you wish you had. Do this using an efficient method such as Systematic Inventive Thinking. Mix the ideas together with your current product line. Put yourself five or ten years out and envision what product offering would make your company the most amazing market leader in your industry. Using your "palette" of ideas, pull in those that, taken together, create that kind of company. Strive for product line coherence. Strive for differentiation. Strive for a customer centric solution. Then, make an actual catalog with product photos, prices, features, and benefits. Make it seem real.

Here is a neat trick. Take all of your company's catalogs as far back as you can and lay them side-by-side chronologically. Study the product offerings each year and note the changes over time. Note the new products, deleted products, and changed products. Do you see an evolutionary theme? Revolutionary? Stagnant? Now place your Dream Catalog five or ten spots ahead of the most recent catalog. Where will your Dream Catalog take you? How far, how fast, how cool?

Think about Fortune 100 companies that might have a Dream Catalog of sorts. Think about former Fortune 100 companies that have since perished. Did they have a Dream Catalog? Would you buy stock in a company if it did not have a Dream Catalog?

Dream on.

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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

A Healthclub for Innovators

by Drew Boyd

Building a prototype of your innovation is a crucial link between conceiving the idea and commercializing it. A physical prototype helps you get immediate feedback from customers, designers, and financial backers as to the commercial viability of the project. It is a necessary step in the patent process. It is a pivotal point in the "GO vs. NO GO" decision, and it can save an inventor money and time as even Abraham Lincoln found out when he prototyped his patented invention.

Prototyping can be difficult especially for a small company or independent inventor. Here is help. Imagine a 15,000 square-foot workshop with tools, equipment, and instruction to build and prototype your inventions. It is called TechShop, now with three locations in the United States. From their website:


"You can think of TechShop as a health club but with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment. It is sort of like a Kinko's for makers, or a Xerox PARC for the rest of us. TechShop is designed for everyone, regardless of their skill level. TechShop is perfect for inventors, "makers", hackers, tinkerers, artists, roboteers, families, entrepreneurs, youth groups, FIRST robotic teams, arts and crafts enthusiasts, and anyone else who wants to be able to make things that they dream up but don't have the tools, space or skills.

TechShop has milling machines and lathes, welding stations and a CNC plasma cutter, sheet metal working equipment, drill presses and band saws, industrial sewing machines, hand tools, plastic and wood working equipment including a 4' x 8' ShopBot CNC router, electronics design and fabrication facilities, Epilog laser cutters, tubing and metal bending machines, a Dimension SST 3-D printer, electrical supplies and tools and pretty much everything you'd ever need to make just about anything."


There are many resources for getting a prototype, but most of these are the "Do-It-For-You" type. TechShop is one of the few that lets you, the innovator, come in and use the machines to "Do-It-Yourself." They offer a wide range of training courses as well as individual consultations when needed. It is truly a "healthclub" for innovators.

Perhaps the only thing I would add is a training course on How to Innovate!

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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

Staging Your Next Idea

by Mike Brown

My wife told me about a home staging TV show where they have $500 to get a home ready to sell. In one episode, the homeowner had already moved their furniture, so the show's designer created cardboard furniture before the open house.

Since cardboard furniture obviously isn't functional, why would they do that?

When trying to sell a house, furniture isn't there for function. Its presence helps prospective buyers visualize the possibilities the house offers, and move them from cursory interest, to motivation, and to purchase.

That's a great example when trying to sell early-stage ideas.

In communicating a relatively new idea, many people limit their options because they assume without a relatively fully-designed and functional concept they'll undermine the sales effort. On the contrary, something merely suggestive of your full concept can be the difference in helping decision makers VISUALIZE the idea you're pitching.

Think how ad agencies pitch ideas. Invariably there's some type of visual - a storyboard, a relevant video snippet, sounds, role playing, etc. Again, none of them are functional, but they are all great at helping depict and sell-in a concept.



So don't let a lack of time, creativity, or initiative thwart your success at pitching ideas. Instead, figure out what your best equivalent of cardboard furniture is and improve your odds of creating a motivated buyer for your idea!

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Mike Brown is an award-winning marketer and strategist with extensive experience in research, strategy, branding, and sponsorship marketing. He's a frequent keynote presenter on innovation and authors Brainzooming!