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A Study On Lift Labs

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Liftware Spoon Background

Lift Labs is a company founded by Anupam Pathak which developed a spoon called Liftware Stabiliser (Rushe, 2014) which is designed to counteract the the physiological tremor and shaking associated with Parkinson’s disease (Neckar, 2014). The company was acquired by Google in September 2014 and integrated into the life sciences division of Google X (Dougherty, 2014).

The Liftware stabilising handle (which can attach spoon, fork and soup spoons) contains motion sensors (an accelerometer) (Gruneisen, 2013) that detect hand motion, and a small onboard computer distinguishes unwanted hand tremors from the intended movement of the hand. The computer directs two motions in the handle to move the utensil attachment in the opposite direction of any detected tremor, therefore counteracting any tremors, stabilising the utensil (Liftware, 2014) and reducing the shaking by up to 70% (Mashable, 2013).

Google launched the spoon in November 2014, costing $295 USD (Rushe, 2014).

Opportunities identified in the Market

When developing a new product or service it is important to consider the opportunities in the market. In delivering new or innovative products into the market, firms must employ a series of activities that are outlined in the New Product Development process (Koen et al, 2007). Peter Koen et al. provides a five-step front-end activity called front-end innovation: ‘opportunity identification, opportunity analysis, idea genesis, idea selection, and

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