Professor pret a porter
Dan Yachin
08.11.2001 12:47
“Some people say, rather foolishly in my opinion, that the Palm Pilot and all the other miniature devices are permanent fixtures of current human behavior in the field of information use. There’s no reason why the most powerful computer shouldn’t shrink to the size of a Palm Pilot within two years. There’s no reason to waste energy on CE standard systems and the like, instead of designing operating systems in advance for powerful computers, which will become smaller,”
On the face of it, this sounds like just another declaration by an executive in a company trying to change the market in order to win more market share. For the speaker, Dr. Joseph Ben-Dak, executive VP and chief scientist of US company Xybernaut, however, the statement expresses his philosophy. It is an ideological statement that begins and ends when we start talking about the market share of the company, which develops wearable computer systems.
In 1991, Ben-Dak founded the UN Global Technology Group and served as its chief for six years. The goal of the unit, which operated in the framework of the United Nations Development Plan (UNDP), was to bring advanced technology to developing countries. Before founding the unit, Ben-Dak worked in the industrial development division of the World Bank.
”I realized that the World Bank deals exclusively with economic models,” says Ben-Dak, explaining why he moved to the UN. Ben-Dak, who arrived in Israel last week to participate in the high-tech conference in Tel Aviv, added. “That used to be the dominant philosophy, but I believe things have changed since then. The UN usually addresses only issues concerning nations and governments. I’m not a great believer in governments and their omnipresent involvement; I believe in the private sector. True scientific enjoyment comes when people do what they want to do. I tried to discover, however, to what degree I could work on this in the UN.”
”I won a UN tender, or more exactly, I created a situation that was a tender; the fact that I’m an Israeli certainly didn’t help. In the end, however, I won. I built a budget and a completely independent unit that operated in several UN frameworks. Eventually, the unit also become very strong economically, to the point where it could fully finance itself and even finance other units, in order to create the right political situations.”
”Globes”: What do you mean?
Ben-Dak: ”I established connections with countries regarding a topic that we referred to as ‘unique products’. Our basic assumption was that every region has the capability to create such products. For them to do so, you have to instill the ability to develop advanced technological infrastructures. That’s quite difficult in such places.”
”I’m not necessarily talking about countries. I worked in 152 countries around the world and had great success in some of them. The key question is what you can do in the private sector at the level of inter-company relations. I can’t change the world. It’s pretty clear that the human race is destroying itself, because the problem now isn’t uncertainty, but a total lack of knowledge about an issue like terrorism. I prefer to concentrate on building a private company, which can concern itself with innovative products, and on creating bridges between a company in the developing world and a company in the developed world, and looking for the common denominator between them - chiefly in a field like biotechnology. Countries like Malaysia and Indonesia have enormous capabilities in this field.”
The Western world probably doesn’t know enough about those companies.
”There are superb Malaysian and Indonesian biotechnology companies. If you combine, for example the Jewish mind and its inventiveness, and the Indonesian mind, which sometimes focuses very clearly on such things, you get a tremendous market advantage.”
That’s a little naive. In the current political reality, it’s hard to visualize companies in a Muslim country like Indonesia cooperating with Israeli companies.
”It’s obvious that the example of Indonesia and Israel is extreme, but it’s an existing fact. There are more concrete examples of countries like Nigeria, which has very large Muslim regions, some of which are quite (politically) extreme. There are great minds there that can certainly accomplish things.”
The value of patents and intellectual property rights
Ben-Dak left the UN in 1997, somewhat disappointed at his inability to realize the ideals that led him to join the organization. “I learned that the UN isn’t built to serve private companies; it’s for governments,” he explains. “The connections I created with dozens of heads of state enable me to accomplish many things with them today. I believe that positive human potential isn’t sufficiently nurtured in aspects like science. The most essential things that can be done in given regions aren’t being fostered. You have to reach a situation in which everyone has a stake in the existing situation. A government that does not understand that has a serious problem with the future. I’m not talking only about advanced science, but about medium-level science. We deal too much with high tech; it’s practically a religion.”
Ben-Dak’s journey, which led him to grope with ideals like this, began in completely different subject matters. He began his academic career by studying Islamic history and sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He later switched to organizational strategy, conflict resolution, and management studies at the University of Michigan, where he completed a doctorate in peace studies. Ben-Dak later completed post-doctorate work in Norway and Sweden in scientific policy and international business. “I gradually reached the conclusion, mostly by looking at our region, that all the peace theories lead nowhere. The only way to reconcile people with different views is to instill in them economic and technology vitality,” he explains. “That led me to change direction completely, towards (utilizing) the knowledge I acquired between then and the present time.”
Ben-Dak initially applied his theoretical knowledge in the field of management consulting, mostly involving the evaluation of companies' performances. Actually, throughout his entire career, Ben-Dak has been active in this field, even while working in other areas. Even today, while he fills his position at Xybernaut, Ben-Dak continues to serve as chairman of Tri-Alpha Consulting.
”In my studies, I entered the field of formative evaluation and I invented several methods,” he recalls. “The chief method today in the US in this field is called logical framework; this is the method I invented.”
Ben-Dak taught these methods in, among other places, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Japan Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), and the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which Ben-Dak helped found. Later, while he was working at the UN, he began to deal with the problem of determining companies’ valuations according to their intellectual property.
Evaluating patents
”I realized,” Ben-Dak says, “that what counts isn’t your technological know-how as a company, but the ability to guard your rights against the competition. Often, high-tech companies really have nothing to offer the investor, because they don’t have a product yet. They wind up drawing circles in the air. I’ve developed economic methods of evaluating the future value of companies, based on the value of their patent. There are currently seven or eight leading companies in the world using these methods.”
Lending a hand to NASA's Mars mission
Ben-Dak is now applying his patent field experience at Xybernaut, which was founded eight years ago and is traded on Nasdaq. Ben-Dak: “98% of the patents in the world in the wearable computer field belong to us, and that doesn’t include non-patent-protected intellectual property. Because of this, we can stop anyone else who is trying to do anything similar for the next twenty years. IBM (Nasdaq: IBM), for example, tried to imitate us. We met in court, and after three hours of unpleasant discussion, they decided it was better to cooperate with us.”
In addition to IBM, Xbernaut has agreements with companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi. “We ourselves don’t manufacture; we only deal in architecture and integration,” says Ben-Dak in describing the nature of the cooperation. “Manufacturing is done by other companies, while distribution is a joint venture. It’s not exactly OEM. In some markets we work alone, while in others, such as the military market, we cooperate. We’re a company of little geniuses. I don’t believe it’s worthwhile for us to manufacture anything.”
Xybernaut’s collection of registered patents is useful in a field that, according to many sources, will have a very rosy future. Although it appears that the current difficulties have banished visionary discussions about future technologies, like the smart home computer and wearable computers, into the deep freeze, Ben-Dak is convinced that products like those Xybernaut is developing are nothing less than indispensable.
”Our goal is very simple - to provide users with computer and communications capabilities wherever they go,” Ben-Dak explains. “In order to maximize output, you need a very powerful computer wherever you may be. You want optimal productivity, the best possible information, the ability to communicate with an expert from outside the system, and the chance to use the Internet in real time, while spending as little time on it as possible. You must have all that, if you’re in a situation in which you’re providing real service. If you’re repairing an airplane in mid-flight, and you either don’t want or are unable to speak with someone outside the plane, or if you have no time to wait for answers from another source, you need the best computer service on the spot. You have to connect with technological information systems and obtain the technical and repair service documentation quickly. You can’t do that with a Palm Pilot or similar devices.”
The example Ben-Dak chose to illustrate the advantages of this concept is no accident. In June, US outer space agency NASA announced it had chosen Xybernaut to supply wearable computer systems to crew members scheduled to participate in the first manned mission to Mars. An announcement by the manager of the NASA Mars project said that the choice of Xybernaut’s wearable computers was due to their high-speed processing and great memory capacity. The announcement also said that the computers were likely to be used on additional missions in the future.
Ben-Dak noted that Xybernaut’s products are currently being used in military and medical systems in diverse locations around the world. While he avoided revealing details of military applications for understandable reasons, he did explain that the use of wearable computers in the medical field has far-reaching implications. “The basic idea is that if the patient has a wearable computer, a doctor can examine a patient from a great distance without help from another doctor near the patient. This is of critical importance right now. It’s likely to become essential in cases of atomic, biological, or chemical warfare, for example.”
Communications through the Bluetooth protocol
All these capabilities, which sometimes seem to be a product of someone's vivid imagination, are installed in Xybernaut’s systems using a variety of the company’s unique technologies. For example, Ben-Dak tells about an invention designed to give wearable computers remote operation capacities through the use of magnetic induction. “You can see what far-reaching implications this has in the military and medical fields. (One application, which is already in commercial use, involves placing the systems in clothes, D.Y.) We’re working very hard on this,” says Ben-Dak. “There are several German companies producing vests containing the entire system. The idea is to substantially reduce the number of wires, with communications based on the Bluetooth protocol. Paramedics in various locations are using this now. Military establishments are very interested in it. Some armed forces are already using it.”
In order to provide such systems with the lowest possible weight of about one kilogram - a crucial attribute for a wearable computer - and a high degree of mobility, Xybernaut uses a technology that replaces conventional batteries. “We have a system based on enzymes found in closed envelopes with membranes, made out of a special material, so that the system can actually renew itself. It has 40 times the power of conventional batteries. Another company developed the technology. In exchange for our help with this technology, we received first rights to use it.” All these things sound like science fiction.
”It’s not science fiction; these things exist,” responds Ben-Dak.” My assistant was circulating here in the corridor after my demonstration, and three people came up to me and wanted to buy it from me on the spot. It costs $3,500, by the way.”
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