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NEW YORK, May 17, 2004 — It looks a bit like an oversized Etch-a-Sketch, but the wireless, electronic-ink signs that Xerox subsidiary Gyricon LLC displayed at the corporation’s Park Avenue offices last week are the most commercial example of small tech springing from the “The Document Company.”
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Tom Kavassalis, chief strategy officer for the Xerox Innovation Group, said that another example of commercial innovation is a process for making microspheres for printing toner out of nanoscale particles. Other areas in development include inkjet-printable plastic electronic circuitry and a microfluidic delivery device called MEMSJet for applications such as precise metering of drugs or deposition of chemicals.
Xerox has had a star-crossed history in innovation, observed venture capitalist Howard Anderson, founder of YankeeTek Ventures and a lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Business. The 1990 book Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer,” by Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander, documented how the Xerox PARC research center invented Ethernet, the windows computer interface, the laser printer and other key computing technologies, yet the company failed to reap the rewards for almost all of these except for laser printing.
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For Xerox to succeed this time around, Anderson believes, “it needs a group like Motorola Ventures that can act with the speed of a VC-backed company and finance projects in ways to give inventors real equity interest” and focus commercialization.
Kavassalis said that Xerox will license IP that falls outside the needs of its products. Anderson said that the best licensing strategy is at IBM, where the company makes $500 million a year because licensing revenue flows to the bottom line of the operating groups that secure them, rather than to corporate coffers. That approach, he noted, offers the kind of structural incentive Xerox could use.
Today, Gyricon, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is the literal poster child for Xerox’s small tech commercial activity. The company was spun off in 2000 to commercialize its SmartPaper technology developed at Xerox PARC. Now, it is announcing a new product line of its small tech signs and software aimed at the huge retail store market.
As Chief Executive Bryan Lubel explained, the company is already selling its $1,295 SyncroSign message board, which displays simple black-and-white text and graphics. Both the message board and the new retail sign systems are based on two-color microbeads the size of grains of sand. Each bead has a black hemisphere and a white one, with one side positively charged and the other negatively.
The beads are embedded in a sheet-like elastomer material (that can be produced in a roll-to-roll process much like paper), and can rotate in response to an electric current to form messages by showing either their dark or light sides.
Kavassalis said that at night, the system can switch over from displaying price to directing store employees on where to restock inventory. “This is more than a signage solution, ” he said. “This is really about streamlining workflow.”
While Lubel noted that retailers are conservative about implementing new technology (and want a return on investment in about 12 months), he reported that several department store chains are testing the systems and he expects they’ll move toward limited in-store field tests later this year. Depending on the number of signs a store might buy, he said a few hundred Gyricon signs and the software to control them would cost around $100,000.
To put that cost in perspective, he described another target market: automobile factories. One major automaker, said Lubel, “prints two million 8-by-11 pieces of paper a day, at three cents each” to track a car as it moves through the assembly line. A Gyricon device could be attached to the car and synchronized with the plant’s computers to display each feature or option that needs to be added as the vehicle moves down the line.
Finally, Lubel said, the company is working to improve brightness and whiteness of signs. Full-color models aren’t yet feasible.
In a related area, Xerox’s Beng Ong has developed a new organic molecule that could make the production of plastic circuitry with inkjets nearly as cheap as printing newsprint. Moreover, it could be a good complementary technology to Gyricon’s.
Ong, a research manager at Xerox Research Centre of Canada, said that his team had developed a molecule for semiconductor ink that could be applied in air, rather than the high vacuum that other organic semiconductors, such as pentacene, require.
The printable plastic electronics could be used to produce the backplane, or driver electronics, for displays such as Gyricon signs or OLED screens.
Xerox is working with Motorola and Dow Chemical on the project, which is supported by a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Company file: Gyricon LLC.
(last updated May 17, 2004)
Company
Gyricon LLC
Headquarters
6190 Jackson Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
History
Gyricon is a Xerox subsidiary that was spun off from its parent company in 2000 for the purpose of commercializing Xerox PARC’s SmartPaper technology.
Industries potentially served
Communications: Displays/Visual Tracking Tools
Small tech-related products and services
Gyricon has developed a line of small tech-based wireless sign displays and accompanying software. To develop the products’ SmartPaper technology, Gyricon used microbeads that are embedded in elastomer and can respond to an electrical charge by showing either a black or white hemisphere, enabling a text display that can be adjusted via wireless connection.
The displays, dubbed SyncroSigns, offer long-lasting battery-based power, reducing the high-labor costs usually associated with managing paper signs in retail, educational, hotel and convention environments. Gyricon is not yet offering color models and is focusing on enhancing the clarity of its black-and-white merchandiser and message board versions. Existing clients include Wagner Zip-Change.
Management
Hervé Gallaire: chairman of the board
Bryan Lubel: chief executive officer
Howard Dennis: vice president and CFO
Robert A. Sprague: vice president and CTO
Selected competitors
E Ink
MagInk Display Technologies Inc.
Philips
Barriers to market
Xerox has a history of developing revolutionary technologies but failing to commercialize them quickly. The company will need to take steps to ensure that this is not the case with its SmartPaper-based product line. Once the product is rolled out to retailers, Gyricon will need to focus on offering a 1-year return on investment (ROI).
Relevant patents
Animated sign assembly
Contact
URL: www.gyricon.com
Phone: 734-822-7600
Fax: 734-222-8231
E-mail: [email protected]
— Research by Gretchen McNeely