Code name Ginger : the story behind Segway and Dean Kamen's quest to invent a new world / Steve Kemper.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kemper, Steve.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Scooters.

Physical Description:

ix, 319 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press, [2003]

Summary:

For anyone who has ever wondered what it was like inside Thomas Edison's lab or the Wright Brothers' garage, here is the twenty-first century equivalent. Brilliant, eccentric inventor Dean Kamen was already a millionaire with an impressive list of medical inventions to his name, but none of them had excited him like his newest world-changer. Extraordinary things were happening inside his New Hampshire laboratory, things no one could find out about -- at least not yet. This is the unforgettable story of "Ginger," officially named the Segway Human Transporter: a self-balancing, electric-powered people mover that Kamen called "magic sneakers." With the pacing and excitement of a suspense novel, Code Name Ginger documents the birth of a marvelous new technology and the feats of its remarkable inventor, his team of engineers, and the financiers who pursued them. Steve Kemper was the only journalist granted complete access to the Ginger project as the machine was designed, prototyped, and readied for manufacture. He takes us inside a world of ingenious engineering, in which improbable ideas become real: wheelchairs climb stairs, scotters balance on two wheels, polluted water is made clean. He reveals Kamen as few have seen him: in the heat of invention, racing against time, caught between his idealistic beliefs and his obsession to make Ginger a commercial success. He chronicles the wheeling and dealing of high-rolling investors and New Economy kingpins from John Doerr to Steve Jobs. And he delivers vital business lessons about leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, and innovation while recounting a technological adventure that will be studied and argued about for decades. Step inside Dean Kamen's laboratory and discover the thrills and risks of invention. The Segway's story, like the machine itself, is appreciated best by climbing aboard and taking a ride.

Contents:

Prologue: First Impressions 1

1 In Development 9

2 A Dream with a Deadline 31

3 CEO Mode 45

4 Frogs 57

5 Winter Solstice 77

6 Lions and Angels 89

7 Tuck and Roll 107

8 Deaned 119

9 The Slip 149

10 No More Shakespeare 165

11 Sanctioning Bodies 183

12 The Path of Minimum Pain 199

13 All Hat, No Rabbits 217

14 Everything Is Connected All the Time 235

15 West Coast Ambush 251

16 Fallout 263

17 The Leak 283

18 The Reveal 297

19 Castles in the Air 309.

ISBN:

1578516730

OCLC:

51983645