Tapping the minds of tomorrow
A Roanoke company sees interns as resource
RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
July 12, 2003
BY REX BOWMAN
ROANOKE - Imagine, college student, a summer internship
in which you do no filework, do not sit at a desk answering
phones all day and do not have to fetch coffee for
senior managers. And, oh yeah: You get the chance to
become rich.
That's the paid internship program created by The
Egg Factory, a Roanoke company that focuses on moving
innovative ideas from the drawing board to the marketplace.
Since its founding in 1999, the company has filed
for 200 patents and has a bulging intellectual-property
portfolio.
But not content to rely on its own employees to come
up with marketable ideas, the company each year selects
16 interns - sifting through 1,400 applications for
this year's crop - and asks them to come up with
potentially billion-dollar inventions.
"It's innovative brain power
that we borrow for the summer," said Adam Hofheimer,
innovation services manager at The Egg Factory and
head of the intern program,
dubbed Innovation Challenge.
The students form four teams of four members each,
and each team is charged with coming up with an idea
and figuring out how to make it profitable. In the
process, they learn more about market research and
analysis, technology development, intellectual property
and the patent process.
Past interns have come up with ideas such as the EntryMate,
a sticky mat that prevents shoes from tracking in dirt.
The mat is being marketed on television.
If the interns' ideas some day make money for The
Egg Factory, the team that came up with them gets 4
percent of the profit, 1 percent for each intern.
Intern Stefani Bachetti, a 20-year-old Richmonder
and industrial-design major at Virginia Tech, said
all 16 interns dream of getting rich from their ideas,
which they guard zealously. In the meantime, she said,
she's having a great time.
"I think the environment we work in is good," said
the third-year student, one of eight Virginians in
the group of interns. "They put us all in one
apartment building and we get to know each other. And
we get to listen to people who are high up in their
professions. It is inspirational."
Bachetti said the experience has given her insight
into the marketing side of product development, something
she lacked as an industrial-design major.
When they're not working on their projects during
the two-month internship, they listen to guest speakers
about three times a week. Speakers include scientists,
top executives and technology experts from NASA, Johnson & Johnson,
Columbia University, Roanoke College, the California
Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. On Thursday, futurist J. Walker Smith
spoke to them.
After-hours, they spend time together in their apartments,
made available rent-free by Roanoke College.
"So far it's been a lot of fun," said Jennifer
Boclair, a 21-year-old Richmonder who just graduated
from Roanoke College. "The highlight is getting
to hang out with the people you work with. And the
speakers are really cool."
Boclair, a business major, said the internship has
helped her confirm that business is what truly interests
her.
Vaughn Weatherdon, a Richmonder and rising senior
at the University of Virginia majoring in economics
and cognitive science, said the internship has given
him not only an education in marketing, but "an
all-around experience" with the world of business.
He also believes his team's innovation could easily
make him money. "I think [ours] has a good chance
of getting on the market," said Weatherdon, 20. "It's
an attachment to an existing product."
Weatherdon said his team's idea is a "vision" product,
but declined to elaborate.
The Egg Factory likes to keep nine or 10 ideas, referred
to as "eggs," in the pipeline that runs from
concept to market, Hofheimer said; five of the eggs
now in the pipeline were hatched by past interns.
"Anybody can be smart; there's no shortage of
intelligent people with high GPAs," Hofheimer
said. "We look for not only academics, but work
experience, outside interests and an ability to work
in groups."
BY REX BOWMAN
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Jul 12, 2003
Contact Rex Bowman at (540) 344-3612 or rbowman@timesdispatch.com
