Asocial robot for the home

After securing $25.3 million in “series A” funding, CEO Steve Chambers met with Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, co-founder and chief scientist, and newly hired Lynda Smith, vice president of consumer and development relations. The meeting’s goal was to lay out the commercial strategy for creating Jibo, the first domestic social robot.

The robot was designed to use cutting-edge voice recognition and artificial intelligence, making it capable of carrying out a variety of tasks like reading incoming emails and news updates, setting reminders, and snapping pictures. The initial launching steps of the robot came from Breazeal who in 2009 had the fascination of leveraging of smartphone platforms in the bid to power robots. Breazeal had teamed up with Jeri Asher who had a background in healthcare, and they started raising funds in pursuit to develop the robot. The initial steps involved identification of a market and also the building of a prototype of the robot.

The robot was meant to assist in households with various tasks where the software used in developing it was the source of the magic. Jibo was introduced to consumers through crowdfunding campaign where pre-orders of the robot were made through the In Digo online crowding platform. A three-minute movie was also done to launch Jibo to the potential consumers.

The building of the robot incorporated use of a platform strategy where a community of developers would assist in the creation of the skills Jibo was to possess. Furthermore, a strategic content partnership was to be used to partner with large enterprises since Jibo wished to ship with engaging on deck. In the design, also the incorporation of pre-existing apps into the platform was also a consideration. Content control was another concern where R- rated content was restricted in the design. The final step was in the shipment of the robot wherein 2016 shipments would start.

Work Cited

Bussgang, Jeffrey & Snively, Christine. “Jibo: A social robot for the home.” Harvard business school. 2016, pp. 1-17.