Lack of Sight Doesn’t Mean Lack of Vision Text Version

On November 12th of this year we posted an audio version of a keynote speech I gave at the Mid-Atlantic ACB Conference on our Serotalk blog and podcast. While many folks heard it and gave some great feedback, it was still about an hour long and who wants to hear me talk for that long? For those of you that would rather read the speech without my trips down memory lane, I have posted it here.

I hope that it will inspire you as much as meeting and interacting with many of you readers, customers, and friends has inspired me.

Mike

Lack of Sight Doesn’t Mean Lack of Vision
By Mike Calvo

I’m going to tell you some of the highlights and lowlights of my life story, tonight. Not all of them – just a few to give you a sense of how it’s possible for a blind kid, a trouble-maker, pretty much written off by his teachers, can be standing here as CEO of a company that is changing the adaptive technology paradigm. It’s a story that didn’t start well and which isn’t over yet, I hope. But it’s a story of how blindness has very little to do with vision. And while this is my story, it’s also a story that any blind person can live if they can dream.
School was not a great experience for me. Every day teachers and guidance counselors would tell me to set my sights low – to find some mind-numbing work I could be trained to do, because what else was there for me? After all “I was born with a strike against me and I would have to work twice as hard as a normal person.” I didn’t begin with a great deal of sight, and I gradually lost what little I did have. By the time I was 18 years of age, I had lost the last traces of my eyesight. I was blind and tired of beating my head against an establishment that didn’t have my best interest at hart. This resulted in me dropping out of high school and taking to the Miami streets and club seen.

I mean, I was handicapped. My goal should be to not be too big a burden on my family and society. Right? A wife? Kids? Success? No way! Maybe you’ve heard this too: “No big, impossible dreams please.”
With inspiration like that, many kids would just give up. But I was the ornery type and I got angry. I’d show them all. And I got mean. I did whatever I needed to do to prove to myself and to the world that I was a person you had to pay attention to. I was going to dream big and fulfill those dreams and I didn’t much care who got hurt or what laws might get broken in the process. I wouldn’t want anyone to emulate that early part of my life. Unfortunately, some of those early big dreams were pretty selfish and caused me to hurt many of those closest to me. Fortunately, somewhere along in there Jesus came into my life!
What? Relax. I’m not going to preach at you. I’m just telling you how it was for me. I’m a firm believer that when you’re ready to accept the Lord in your life, he’ll be there. You don’t need me selling him to you.
What God did was teach me to forgive both those that hurt me and myself, to redirect the energy I was putting into anger, bitterness, and rejection into doing something productive. He helped me cage my impatience. He helped me see that it wasn’t “me against them.” It was me, finding a way to love “them” and get “them” to work with me to accomplish something together. It was me accepting that whether or not I liked society and its ignorance, I was getting an education from every challenge I experienced and every person I met and if I paid attention, I would discover how together we could do more than any of us could do separately. In other words, thanks to this divine intervention, I could see the world in a different light. Since then, life has been a great deal more exciting! But, I digress.

When I was twenty one, I became a dad. “No more streets or clubs for Mikey.” I had to be responsible. I began working in a bank, and as part of my job I needed to learn to use the computer. Due to the encouragement of Greg Luther of the Florida Division of Blind Services I quickly realized I was a pretty good teacher. So I took on the job of teaching how to use the computer to other blind people at the bank, and later, for that vary same agency. I ultimately ended up opening my own training business. At the same time I was indulging my love of music by doing audio production. And in the process an idea was niggling in the back of my mind. At that time we were just getting sophisticated with tools to help blind people be productive at work and school. There was very little to help “these people” enjoy the fullness of life. Sure there were books on tape – a truly wonderful innovation; and there were news reading services by telephone. But TV, movies, the emerging Internet were all pretty much beyond reach.
There was this huge barrier called accessibility. And those people who were working at reducing the barriers were focused on what might make a blind person productive or educated and didn’t pay much attention to the things the blind person might enjoy after work or school.
But man! I wanted my piece of that Internet pie! So, I joined forces with my best friend from high school and we created a product called Radio Webcaster. I even wrote my own website for the first time. It had moderate success in the mainstream community. Surprisingly, at least to me, blind people bought the product as well. It was an eye-opening experience, no pun intended, to realize that blind people everywhere were just like me. They had money to spend and they liked to be entertained just as much as the next person. They just didn’t have a product that they could buy for themselves without having to mortgage everything they had.

While Radio Webcaster was a great idea for its time, I knew I wanted to do something more. My vision was firmly placed on the Internet and tools to make it more accessible. With full access to the Internet blind folks could enjoy pretty much everything sighted folks could enjoy.
Greg had told me that “behind the computer I am an equal.” There is a cartoon, I think from the New Yorker, that shows a dog sitting at a computer and he’s saying to another dog, “The cool thing is that on the Internet no one knows that you’re a dog.”
And the cool thing is that with the right tools, over the Internet, no one would know you were blind. You are judged by the people you interact with by what you know, what you can do, by who you really are – not by whether or not you are sighted. So the challenge was to create those tools. Because in my mind I could see that accessibility meant equality. This was a place where the barriers had to come down and could, with a little creative thought, tumble quickly.
What were those barriers?
First was the computer itself. Most folks weren’t necessarily skilled computer users. In fact, one survey shows a scant five percent of blind folks use computers. The greatest possible liberating and enabling tool and not even five percent of the blind population had access because of cost and training.

The whys were:
· Cost. Accessibility tools were prohibitively expensive and without government aid there was little chance for most blind people to have them.
· Complexity. Accessibility tools added a whole layer of complexity to computer use – which was, in the early days, pretty complex in itself. A typical blind person needed more than thirty hours of class room time to become moderately competent in using these tools. Proficiency was many, many more hours of training away.
· Availability. Because of the expense, the only path to computer use for a blind person was through vocational rehab training. That’s a pretty narrow channel and only reaches a small number of people and mostly people of employable age.
Let me share a bit of frustration. Henter-Joyce and others who did the pioneer work to bring computer access to the blind were wonderful. They opened a world that had been completely closed to us. But many of the people that followed them and took control of the companies making accessibility tools had a different philosophy. They wanted to milk the status quo for every dollar they could make. They stopped innovating and focused on locking up the vocational rehab channel, doing everything they could to push small, upstart innovators out of business. That would have been okay if they were actually serving the majority of the blind population. But, as I mentioned earlier, they were reaching a tiny percentage. And as for the other blind people they didn’t reach? Well they just didn’t care.
We came into this business thinking differently. Because we were effectively locked out of the traditional blind services channels, we focused on taking our product direct to blind folks. Our goal was to overcome the myth that blind people were not a market – because that myth is very destructive. It keeps venture money out of the blind consumer market and stifles innovation.
We believe that in fact blind folks do have money and do buy stuff but they are a highly fragmented market and getting to them is not easy. We set out to prove that with products that were fun, highly functional, intuitive and easy to use, and inexpensive that leveraged the power of the latest off the shelf hardware and software, we could get ordinary blind folks of all ages to be part of the digital age even if they had to spend their own money.
I will tell you that we are succeeding, although at a much slower pace than I would like. Over the last 9 years Serotek has changed the direction of access to computers and the Internet for the blind by lowering the cost of a screen reader from over $1000 to as little as $9.95 per month. Thanks to one of the most dedicated group of people I have ever met!
This was my vision from the beginning. Here I was, a blind Cuban kid from Miami, lugging a thirty-pound computer, wandering from place to place looking for someone who would believe. The first guy who believed was a lawyer, Av Gordon. He steered me to a consulting company, Matrix Associates and its leader Michael Fox. Matrix had just finished a strategic self-examination and determined under no circumstances would they invest time and effort in another start-up. But as a favor to Av, they listened.
The product was dismal. It had more bugs than a New York hotel room. But those Matrix guys could hear the truth behind the faltering message. And they dumped their new “no start up” policy and have worked with Serotek ever since, Michael Fox taking on the role of COO and mentoring me in the art of management. Sometimes it took a lot of mentoring – and a two-by-four. But I learned.
Our vision, and we articulated it in our very first business plan, was to treat blind people as a market; provide them with the tools and services they need; and migrate them and the industry towards universal design. From the very beginning we believed accessibility was a right, not a privilege. We’ve stayed true to that mission ever since.
From the start we went against the industry trends. We adapted our software to run with the very latest OS releases. We created products that could be used right out of the box with very little training and we delivered functionality that fully served blind people’s lifestyle and did a very good job with their common business needs.
We focused on mobile – smart-drive based software that could be plugged in anywhere and then Internet-based software available anywhere, anytime from the cloud – for free. We charged a simple, low price and gave away updates. We created unique ways for peer to peer communication using the Internet. We were roundly hated by the industry leaders.
And we developed a bit of a cult following which served us in good stead when we got served a cease and desist-order for using a name vaguely related to the industry leader’s name. It was the best thing that ever happened to us. Here was the industry giant beating up on this tiny company whose only crime was that it created better, cheaper products. The community was up in arms and name recognition was no longer a problem. We were essentially liberated from using the old name (a legacy that really no longer fit us) and everyone knew who we were. I’d love to claim that I planned that, but I suspect it was, yet again, truly a case of divine intervention.

Since then we have released new and exciting products in to the marketplace at an accelerated rate: social networking tools – why shouldn’t blind people have FaceBook and Twitter and Linked In and all of that? Music; I phone applications, tools for making meetings and events accessible both locally and over the Internet. We have cheered others in the industry as they moved into our space and we have roared our approval for mainstream players like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft for making their tools universally accessible. We are for anything that promotes universal accessibility.
Blind as I am, I saw this coming more than a decade ago and now my vision is coming to pass. Serotek is still not a huge company, but it is growing. And we remain the only company in the industry with a blind CEO – the only company that looks to a blind person for its vision. Not only that, sighted people are the minority at Serotek. Not because I don’t like sighted people, it’s just that we have been able to find so much great talent in our own community. Our lead programmer Matt Campbell is visually impaired and is one of the most amazing software engineers I have ever met!
So far the vision has been 20/20. Today I am blessed with a beautiful wife that is here with me tonight and five, yes five, wonderful children!
The lesson of this story is that the biggest barrier to success is not lack of eyesight but lack of insight – knowing and believing in yourself. If you believe in yourself and open your heart to a little divine guidance when you need it, anything is possible. After all if our creator gave us the ability to dream HE would be awfully cruel if HE didn’t give us a way to achieve that dream. So, what’s your dream?

Thank you.

The Serotek Ultimatum

Serotek declares war on the traditional adaptive technology industry and their blind ghetto products. With this announcement we are sending out a call to arms to every blind person and every advocate for the blind to rise up and throw off the tyranny that has shaped our lives for the past two decades. It is a tyranny of good intentions – or at least what began as good intentions. But as the proverb says, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And for the past two decades the technologies originally conceived to give us freedom have been our shackles. They have kept us tied down to underperforming, obscenely expensive approaches that only a small percentage of blind people can afford or master. They have shackled us to government largess and the charity of strangers to pay for what few among us could afford on our own. And we have been sheep, lead down the path, bleating from time to time, but without the vision or the resources to stand up and demand our due.
That time is past.
We stand today on the very edge of universal accessibility. Mainstream products like the iPod, iPhone, and newly announced iPad are fully accessible out of the box. And they bring with them a wealth of highly desirable accessibility applications. The cost to blind people is exactly the same as the cost to sighted people. It’s the same equipment, the same software, the same functionality, and fully accessible.
What Apple has done, others are doing as well. The adaptive technology vendor who creates hardware and software that is intended only for blind folks, and then only if they are subsidized by the government, is a dinosaur. The asteroid has hit the earth, the dust cloud is ubiquitous, the dinosaur’s days are numbered.
But dinosaurs are huge, and their extinction does not happen overnight.. Even as they die, they spawn others like them (take the Intel Reader for example). Thank you, no. Any blind person can have full accessibility to any type of information without the high-cost, blind-ghetto gear. They can get it in the same products their sighted friends are buying. But let’s face it; if we keep buying that crap and keep besieging our visual resource center to buy that crap for us, the dinosaurs of the industry are going to keep making it. Their profit margins are very good indeed. And many have invested exactly none of that profit in creating the next generation of access technology, choosing instead to perpetuate the status quo. For instance, refreshable braille technology, arguably the most expensive blindness-specific(and to many very necessary) product has not changed significantly in 30 years. Yet, the cost remains out of reach for most blind people. Where's the innovation there? Why have companies not invested in cheaper, faster, smaller, and more efficient ways to make refreshable braille? Surely the piezoelectric braille cell is not the only way? And what about PC-based OCR software? It's still around a thousand dollars per license, yet core functionality hasn't changed much; sure, we get all sorts of features not at all related to reading, along with incremental accuracy improvements, but why are these prices not dropping either, especially when you consider that comparable off-the-shelf solutions like Abby Finereader can be had for as low as $79? ? And let's not forget the screen reader itself, the core technology that all of us need to access our computers in the first place. Do we see improvements, or just an attempt to mimic innovation with the addition of features which have nothing to do with the actual reading of the screen, while maintaining the same ridiculous price point.

This maintaining of the status quo will, inevitably, face an enormous crash, worse than the transition from DOS to Windows based accessibility. You can expect a technology crash that will put users of the most expensive accessibility gear out of business.
Why? I won’t bore you with all the technical details, but the basic story is that some of these products have been kept current with patches and fixes and partial rewrites and other tricks we IT types use when we haven’t got the budget to do it right, but we need to make the product work with the latest operating system. That process of patching and fixing creates an enormous legacy barrier that makes it impossible to rewrite without abandoning all who came before. But you can only keep a kluge working for so long before it will crumble under its own weight. That, my friends, is exactly where some of the leading adaptive technology vendors find themselves today.
There are exceptions. Serotek is an exception because we have completely recreated our product base every three years. GW Micro is an exception because they built their product in a highly modular fashion and can update modules without destroying the whole. KNFB is an exception because they take advantage of off-the-shelf technologies, which translate ultimately into price drops and increased functionality.

But even we who have done it right are on a path to obsolescence. The fundamental need for accessibility software is rapidly beginning to vanish. The universal accessibility principles we see Apple, Microsoft, Olympus, and others putting in place are going to eliminate the need for these specialty products in a matter of just a very few years.
Stop and think. Why do you need accessibility tools? To read text? E-book devices are eliminating that need. None of them are perfect yet, but we are really only in the first generation. By Gen2 they will all be fully accessible. To find your way? GPS on your iPhone or your Android based phone will do that for you. To take notes? Easy on any laptop, netbook, or iPad. Heck, you can record it live and play it back at your convenience. Just what isn’t accessible? You can play your music, catch a described video, scan a spreadsheet, take in a PowerPoint presentation – all using conventional, off-the-shelf systems and/or software that is free of charge.
There are still some legacy situations where you need to create an accessibility path. Some corporations still have internal applications that do not lend themselves to modern devices. There will certainly be situations where a specialized product will better solve an accessibility problem than a mainstream one, especially in the short term. We don't advocate throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but we do advocate that we begin to hasten the inevitable change by using accessible mainstream solutions wherever possible. Even now, the leading edge companies are reinventing their internal systems with accessibility as a design criteria, so the situations that require specialized products will certainly become fewer as time goes on.
If our current Assistive technology guard's reign is coming to an end, why the war? Why not just let it die its own, natural, inevitable death? Because nothing dies more slowly than an obsolete technology. Punch cards hung on for twenty or thirty years after they were completely obsolete. The same is true for magnetic tape. Old stuff represents a comparatively large investment, and people hate to throw away something they paid a lot of money for even if it’s currently worthless. But that legacy stuff obscures the capabilities of the present. It gets used in situations where other solutions are cheaper and more practical. The legacy stuff clogs the vocational rehab channel, eating up the lion’s share of the resources but serving a tiny portion of the need. It gets grandfathered into contracts. It gets specified when there is no earthly reason why the application requires it. The legacy stuff slows down the dawning of a fully accessible world.
It hurts you and it hurts me.
To be sure, I make my living creating and selling products that make our world accessible. But first and foremost, I am a blind person. I am one of you. And every day I face the same accessibility challenges you face. I have dedicated my life and my company to making the world more accessible for all of us, but I can’t do it alone. This is a challenge that every blind person needs to take up. We need to shout from the rooftops: “Enough!”
We need to commit ourselves in each and every situation to finding and using the most accessible off the shelf tool and/or the least-cost, highest function accessibility tool available. With our dollars and our commitment to making known that our needs and the needs of sighted people are 99% the same, we can reshape this marketplace. We can drive the dinosaurs into the tar pits and nurture those cute fuzzy little varmints that are ancestors to the next generation. We can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
And all it takes is getting the best possible solution for your specific need. Once you have found the solution to fill that need, let the company know you appreciate their work towards better accessibility. Let your friends (sighted and blind) know about these accessibility features; they probably don't know that such features exist.
Make your needs known to the vocational rehab people you are working with, and don’t allow them to make recommendations for a specific technology for no other reason than that it’s been in the contract for years. Make sure your schools and your workplace understand the need to push technology in to the accessible space. Show them the low-cost alternatives. In this economy some, the intelligent ones, will get it and the tide will begin to turn.
And then in short order the tsunami of good sense will wash away the old, and give us the space to build a more accessible world for all of us. Let the demand ring out loud and clear and the market will follow.
If this message rings true to you, don’t just shake your fist in agreement and leave it at that. let your voice be heard! Arm yourself with the vision of a future where there are no social, conceptual, or economic barriers to accessibility, and let your words and your actions demonstrate that you will not rest until that vision is realized. Take out your wallet and let your consumer power shine! You do mater as a market people! You have kept this company alive with your money for 8 years this month! I believe that if we all get together and do our part, we will finally say “NO more!” same old same old! Join the revolution! Together we can change the world!

From Street Kid to CEO: An Interview with Mike Calvo - AccessWorld® - September 2007

We invite all of you to check out this interview of Mike Calvo, Serotek's CEO, in the September 2007 issue of AccessWorld, the assistive technology newsletter published by the American Foundation for the Blind.

Replay of Mike Calvo's Appearance on the Computer America Technology Show

If you missed Mike Calvo on Computer America, you may listen to this recording of his segment on the show. Great job, Mike!

On the Shoulders of Giants

System Access to Go represents a major step forward, not just in accessibility software, but in the fundamental way software is delivered. It is feature-rich, easy to use, and amazingly inexpensive. But it is in no way the end-all and be-all of what accessibility software can be. Nor was it created from whole cloth. It rests on the shoulders of accessibility giants like Ted Henter, Doug Geoffray and Dan Weirich, Jim Fruchterman, and others who broke down the barriers to the digital world and created a structure and process by which those without sight can use the computer and Internet with nearly the same ease as those with sight.

Serotek gladly acknowledges its debt to those who went before. Without them there would be no adaptive technology industry. They gave us standards and a framework that makes innovation possible. At the same time, we must point out that we are standing on their shoulders, which means we are reaching higher and accomplishing new accessibility goals that are beyond the capability of traditional tools. We can do that, in part, because we joined the party after lots of the hard work was already accomplished. We didn't have to invent what was already there; nor did we have to carry the burden of legacy software, accommodating users with older versions and a huge investment in training. We entered the frey lighter, with fewer restrictions and the benefits of 20/20 hindsight. We have used this advantage to create an even greater accessibility advantage for our customers.

If you follow the history of technical innovation you will note that it is almost always the late comer who breaks the mold and disrupts the technology pattern to the benefit of technology consumers. It was not IBM that created the personal computer; it was companies like Commodore and Apple, among others. It was not AT&T that gave us the cell phone. The fact is, the dominant player in any technology has a very difficult time innovating the next generation. Their investment in the entrenched technology -- their bread and butter -- is great, and they cannot afford to innovate at the expense of their cash cow. As one industry veteran noted, "A cash cow can be a damned heavy monkey on your back." Only new players with nothing to lose can take the risks of doing things in an entirely new way.

This is as true in the adaptive technology field as it is in mainstream technology. However, the unfortunate truth is that the dollars are a lot less in adaptive technology, so innovation is far more difficult to justify. There are no big venture players throwing billions at adaptive technologies. It's a game that has to be played for the love of rattling the cage and changing the mix. It is a matter of commitment to community and caring that each and every one of us has the same opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The challenges thrown at disruptive technologies are remarkably similar: people say that it doesn't do everything the traditional technology did, it's based on a mistake and when the mistake is corrected it won't work, it promises more than it delivers, and so on. Often the challenges are thrown by people who haven't taken the time to even use the new technology or by those who lack the vision to see how something might be done in a new way and thus open up vistas that have never been possible.

Let's look at System Access to Go versus these challenges.

First, SA to Go is simply a new delivery approach for System Access. Whether or not all System Access features work perfectly in the beta release, you can be sure that when the full product is presented to the marketplace it will be as robust as System Access. It has to be; it's the same software.

But it is also true that System Access doesn't deliver every feature and benefit that the traditional screen readers deliver. It really doesn't need to. What it does deliver are the features and benefits used most by most people most of the time. Screen readers are no different than any other technology. The vast majority of features go unused by most users. It's a comfort, to be sure, to know the features are there, but without a specific need, there is no incentive to invest the training time and dollars to become adept at something that will never be used in day to day life. System Access is an accessibility tool for the way we live, work, study, and communicate. And from the current, highly functional base, over time, other features will be added as demand dictates. (That, by the way, is precisely how the traditional screen readers evolved.) And, because System Access can do many things traditional screen readers cannot do, we expect that whole new applications that we have yet to imagine will emerge simply because they can. Think of it like the transition from rotary dialing to touch-tone dialing. Originally SA to Go technology may be just a replacement. Eventually it will spawn its own definition of what accessibility means.

During System Access development, Serotek worked closely with Microsoft, and Microsoft was fully aware of the techniques System Access uses to effectively access the Windows operating system. Not only did Microsoft not object; they have actively encouraged us and helped us to market our approach to accessibility.

Will Microsoft change its approach in the future and close some of our access methods? It's always possible. We certainly aren't so arrogant that we expect we can dictate what Microsoft chooses to do. On the other hand, there is no particular reason for them to close this path, so we do not expect it to happen precipitously. After all, some of the access methods we used in System Access have been around since Windows 3.1 and are still used even by Microsoft. Anyone that opines that Microsoft will change things about its operating system, unless they are reading documents that we aren't, is just stating an opinion. As a Microsoft partner we are just as in touch and privy to the same information as any other accessibility technology vendor.

The one thing that the industry can be confident of is that Serotek will stay right on top of the emerging mainstream technologies from Microsoft and others, and we will always be looking for ways to apply the latest mainstream features to make accessibility more natural.

If there is any criticism that really seems unjust it is the accusation that Serotek promises more than it delivers. We believe our company is unique, not only in the adaptive technology field, but in the entire software industry, for refusing to sell "vaporware." We go out of our way to make sure that every promise made is fulfilled.

That doesn't mean that we haven't had a bug or two from time to time. We have as good a track record as anyone, but not a perfect track record in that regard. But we have always fixed the bugs and brought the performance up to snuff at no additional cost to the user in very short order. In fact we'll put Serotek's release history against anyone in the adaptive technology industry and are confident that we have been faster, cleaner, and more functional, and have more consistently met expectations than anyone. One of the reasons we do public beta releases is to exercise the software fully before the first official release. It's the best test methodology we know.

Our biggest disappointment, though, is how slow our community has been to understand the implications of SA to Go. Hello? People, we are standing on the very edge of universal accessibility. We are delivering, in this beta release, software that can be accessed from anywhere and which immediately turns an ordinary Windows XP or above computer into a fully accessible device. It doesn't hack into any touchy parts of the computer creating a security risk. It simply works as long as it is needed and is then discarded like a used tissue, leaving no residue on the host machine. It's disposable accessibility. It's accessibility anywhere. Yet somehow several members of the community are more concerned about esoteric features, used by a tiny fraction of the public, than they are about the fact that with SA to Go, there need be no inaccessible computers. The shackles that have bound us to one machine, in one place, or put us at the mercy of businesses and government agencies to think that "accessibility" might be nice to offer, are gone. We don't need to fight for our right to accessibility in court. It's simply there.

The giants gave us a platform. Serotek has used that platform to leap forward into a world where accessibility is taken for granted. We are inviting everyone to come along and hoping that among them is the innovator who will stand on our shoulders for the next great leap.

Serotek And It's Disruptive Technologies

Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christiansen recently wrote an article for Technology Review outlining the Rules for Innovation. Mr. Christiansen contends that bringing innovation to market is far less of a crap-shoot than venture capitalists pretend. In fact, he outlines a handful of conditions which almost guarantee success. His rules are:

1. Take root in disruption
2. Have the necessary scope to succeed
3. Leverage the right capabilities
4. And disrupt competitors, not customers.

We looked at Serotek’s products in the light of Mr. Christiansen’s rules and by any measure we are on track for success.

I would like to give you a brief tour of Serotek’s products and compare them to the factors Mr. Christiansen has identified in his research as absolute characteristics of innovation success.

Taking Root in Disruption

What does this mean? The premise is relatively simple. Companies that are leaders in their markets are almost never the innovators of the next technological revolution. This happens because they are well managed and listen to their customers who always tell them that they want better and less expensive versions of what they are currently selling. Thus these market leaders will continue to produce the best in their specific market niche but they will miss entirely the next technological wave which will sweep in from an unsuspected direction and overwhelm the old way of approaching the problem. Nowhere is this more evident than in computers with their successive waves of mainframes, minis, and personal computers . Each new wave represented a major degradation in functionality, but brought that functionality to a previously unserved or underserved market. Once it had taken hold, each wave gradually overwhelmed the prior markets in a grassroots revolution.

The attributes of disruptive technologies are:

1. Simplicity
2. Convenience
3. Low cost

They appeal to a market generally considered too small to be of interest to the mainstream players. The two tests for whether a product is disruptive are:

1. Does it enable less-skilled, less-wealthy customers to do for themselves things that only the wealthy or skilled intermediaries could previously do?

2. Does it target customers at the low end who don’t necessarily need all of the functionality of current products?

Clearly Serotek’s products pass these two tests with flying colors. Our user interface and intuitive level of interaction allow people with little or no training and no previous computer experience and with significant physical impairments including blindness and other manual dexterity challenges to access computers. Our target market, the blind and the elderly, are most interested in the Internet fundamentals - e-mail, shopping, chat rooms, entertainment, and information. There is enormous new value to these people by having any access at all. And, generally speaking, our market has been ignored by current vendors as not representing an important economic demographic.

Furthermore, our business model allows us to earn very attractive returns serving our chosen market. We have created an extremely successful business focused only on this low-end, relatively ignored market segment and now, tier by tier we are bringing our innovations to other market segments (such as students and professionals) without losing ease of use.

The Scope to Succeed

Christiansen discusses two technological paths to success: the integrated path where companies sell their proprietary components and products across a wide range of product lines and businesses; and the non-integrated strategy where companies outsource as much as possible, promote industry standards, and use modular, open systems and components. He claims that the integrated strategy is essential where product functionality is not yet good enough and enormous advantage is gained by creating architectures that push the state of the art based on proprietary technology. The open architecture strategy fits the marketplace Serotek’s products find themselves in.

Simplicity, convenience, and speed to market dominate. Powerful technologies have been developed by mainstream companies like U3, Microsoft, and other technologies, including open source, used in our products, that can be adapted easily to our niche market. At the same time, our proprietary backbone architecture, with our patentable core technologies, give us a sustainable advantage over others who might enter this market. In essence, we have the best of three worlds. Our proprietary technologies conform to key industry standards and allow us to integrate leading-edge components and bring a highly functional product to market fast.

Leveraging the Right Capabilities

Christiansen claims that innovations fail when managers attempt to implement them in organizations that are incapable of succeeding. Three factors determine an organization’s innovation limits:

1. Resources to succeed
2. Processes that facilitate success
3. Values that allow employees to give this innovation the attention it needs to succeed

The limits are surprising. Resources are management and money, but oddly enough, proven managers and lots of money are not ingredients to drive innovation. Proven managers tend to go with what has worked before, assuming that new markets will behave in the same fashion as stable markets. But that is rarely the case. New or evolving markets need new thinking. Too much money allows ventures to follow a flawed strategy too long. For example, many over-funded companies during the dot-com bubble valued advertisers above users. Having to scrape by forces the venture to adapt to the desires of actual customers. Looking for customer revenue to fund operations and development forces the venture to uncover viable strategies quickly. Too much money encourages impatience for growth and too much patience for profits. Cash-rich companies tend to take huge gambles before the right strategy can be known. A better, surer path to a solid company is to be patient for growth and impatient for profits.

The Serotek team brings together entrepreneurs and technologists who have a passion for serving this market. The leaders are blind and understand the characteristics of serving this market. They have dealt first-hand with the barriers that vision-impaired people face trying to use computers and the Internet and the huge learning investment required to become skilled in conventional assistive technology.

The company was built using a bootstrap economic model. Every possible administrative function is outsourced and automated. The company carries minimal overhead but can bring the resources together to serve demand. It is completely scalable, able to grow as demand grows, yet has been able to survive through the cash-lean start-up period.

Process can be a barrier. Good processes are essential to established companies serving stable markets. They allow continued improvements in quality and efficiency. But processes are inflexible. Innovation demands flexibility. Thus a start-up company like Serotek has an advantage over behemoth companies with rigid Six Sigma rules because it can shape itself to the needs of its market segments.

Values can be the third barrier. Existing companies have existing value networks with rigid expectations and rewards based on the type of business that has traditionally brought success. Values are even more rigid than processes and thus disruptive innovations have little chance of being given the priority they need to develop and flourish. Serotek’s value system is completely focused on the success of Serotek's products.

Disrupt Competitors, Not Customers

The final success parameter is to help customers do things they want or have been trying to do; don’t make them relearn how to do things they can already do. And don’t bother making it easy for them to do things they weren’t doing or had no interest in doing. This is a very important parameter for us.

There are members of our community who are extremely skilled at using computers and accessing the Internet. They have invested many hours in honing those skills and they may have little interest in Serotek’s products for personal use. In fact, they may resent it because it seems to give others the same rewards for little effort that they earned with great effort. Yet we are making these people advocates by positioning Serotek’s products as a supplement, not a replacement for their current technology. Serotek’s products let them use powerful Internet-based features and entertainment without forcing them to be tied to a single location. At the same time, those who have an intrinsic fear of computers and technology but are interested in the ability to use computers, connect to family and friends through e-mail and Skype, to shop, or enjoy the many entertainment features available online, can have it now, without undergoing the grueling training necessary to master traditional assistive technology. It is an easy path to major improvements in quality of life.

Meanwhile, the manufacturers of traditional assistive technology are going to face some serious challenges in the future. Where they have always made the user adapt to products and services designed primarily for people who didn’t need assistive technology but for government purchasing agencies, we have turned that strategy on its head. Serotek adapts its products to its users; it doesn’t force its users to adapt to anything but new possibilities. The analogy we use is the “electronic curb cut” which simply removes the barrier for all.

Disruptive? Heck yeah! Serotek’s products absolutely turn the tables. With Serotek’s products, people rule, not technology. And so-called disabilities are simply user characteristics that we accommodate.

We read Professor Christiansen’s analysis and pump our fists and shout “Right on!”. We may not have set out to follow these rules, but these rules describe the way we organize and execute our business strategy, out of necessity and passion for our market, rather than driven by any “formula for success.” And we have an abiding faith that this approach will carry through to success - success for our customers who, for the first time, can enjoy the full benefits of accessibility anywhere; success for our investors whom we firmly believe will be richly rewarded for their faith in us; and ultimately success for ourselves as well. We are convinced that we have just scratched the surface. Our disruptive Serotek has a whole lot more disrupting to do, before it too becomes staid and old hat.

Isn’t this fun?