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Jerome Rifkin, mastermind behind Tensegrity Prosthetics and this year's First Place winner and Best Bioscience Award in the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship's Business Plan competition, sat down for a few minutes to talk with me about his path so far and where he'd like to be going.

Background

A mechanical engineer by trade, Jerome Rifkin became interested in locomotion and prosthetics after he broke his leg in a bicycling accident. He has been working on the research and design of his prosthetic foot for the past six years. The foot that Jerome designed has been very well received, winning "Best New Industrial Product Award" at the Colorado Inventors Showcase in November 2005, and $200,000 from the National Institutes of Health's Small Business Innovation Research grant.

He initially created the Tensegrity business plan for a class in entrepreneurship he was taking at CU-Boulder. He decided to enter it into the 2005 Demming Business Plan Competition, where he came in fourth place and received a lot of feedback he incorporated into his revised plan. He also received mentoring and advice from more experienced scientists, entrepreneurs and businessmen, including Joel Back of the Colorado School of Mines Engineering Research Center for Intelligent Biomedical Devices and Musculoskeletal Systems and David Spiro, founder of the FBN Group Inc., a strategic marketing group based in Boulder.

Questions & Answers

Q: Talk about your interest in innovation and entrepreneurship--Did one lead to the other, or have you always been interested in both?

A: Innovation definitely came first for me, although since I was a child my father always pointed out that the guy who invented teflon wasn't getting rich, but probably should have been. Entrepreneurship is about learning as much as I can, especially about leadership.

Q: What have you learned through the process of creating and revising your business plan? What advice would you give other people?

A: I learned that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, and if you realize you don't have the skills, get help! When I took 4th place in the Demming competition, one of my teammates had gotten creative a few key numbers. The judges caught it pretty quickly, and we lost a lot of credibility. For my teammate, that unethical behavior was just something he did for a class, for a grade. For me, his behavior affected something that was very dear to my life. That was simply unacceptable. Know the motivations of the people who work with you, and don't trust them with tasks that exceed their commitment to the project. That was the first part of the lesson.

The second part of the lesson was when one of the judges, David Spiro, took me aside and told me that he wanted to help me. Over the course of a few months, we reworked the plan. I did the numbers and research, and he refined the story so that it was more coherent and readable. Making a plan to execute on and help amputees was the focus, not bringing it to another competition.

Q: What's next for you? Will you always be a prosthetic foot guy or do you see yourself branching out into other biomedical or mechanical design products?

A: I'd like to continue a leadership role in Tensegrity Prosthetics, as well as keeping the innovation alive by developing new joint geometries. I already have basic designs for an ankle, a knee, and a hip. Eventually, I'd like to make a pair of very efficient running pants or possibly a legged vehicle. That sort of technology could touch almost every sector in the business world. So I won't always be a prosthetic foot guy, but I'll always probably have one foot in the world of biomechanical design.

- by Tiffany Espinosa