Bossa Nova Concepts, a Pittsburgh-based maker of robotic toys, plans to create a whole new relationship between technology and toys, which is to say between engineered play and kids. In bringing tech to tots, the company's founder, Sarjoun Skaff, CEO David Palmer and Business Strategist John Feghali, faced alternative approaches. One was to tailor the technology to connect with kids' recognized level of experience with mechanical toys, and then extend it. The other, which they chose instead, is to use the most advanced technology to engage the kids' instincts for play in a way that has never been done before--at least not with a manufactured toy.
In simplest terms, they plan to shift the paradigm of play for kids as they move into the age range of double digits by providing toys with life-like movements and appearance. They want to begin selling these toys into the $1.5 billion global robotic toy market sometime in 2009. The key feature will be toys that can run or walk with the child without losing balance. That's no easy thing--even sometimes for real live creatures playing with a 10-year-old.
Although new to this venture, The Bossa Nova team represents the most advanced understanding of computing and robotics coming out of Carnegie Mellon University, especially in the education and research of Skaff, the company's founder. It also counts an impressive pedigree of marketing and distribution on the part of Bossa Nova’s CEO Palmer, who learned how a global business reaches its customers during a career at Pittsburgh-based FedEx Ground, and also in studies for an MBA at UCLA as well as work with CMU's Tepper School of Business. Finally, putting a technology-based concept together as a blockbuster product for easily distracted consumers of a targeted age group calls for an understanding of life-cycle management that Feghali was able to learn in global consulting for IBM and through CMU's Masters Degree program in Information System Management.
Behind it all of course, are the extraordinary power of miniaturized electronics and the evolution of computer languages that provide most Furbys with more computing capacity than America used to send men to the moon. In addition, the increasingly nimble, technology-focused business development infrastructure in Pittsburgh helped the Bossa Nova trio get their business on its feet. This included encouragement and targeted finance from the Pittsburgh Technology Council, Carnegie Mellon's Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation, and the business management and finance team at Innovation Works.