Ping Fu - Inspiring Entrepreneurship

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Case Details:

Case Code : LDEN038
Case Length : 15 Pages
Period : 1996-2006
Pub Date : 2006
Teaching Note : Available
Organization : Raindrop Geomagic
Industry : IT, Manufacturing
Countries : USA

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Please note:

This case study was compiled from published sources, and is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion. It is not intended to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation. Nor is it a primary information source.

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"Ping Fu represents the quintessential story of someone coming to this country and using brains, ingenuity, and vision to overcome adversity and make her company a success."¹

- Dan Davies, Publisher of Business Leader Magazine, in 2005.

"She has an amazing ability to engage people's imagination. It's almost hypnotic how she manages to engage people in her vision."²

- Jon Fjeld, Executive Director, Duke University's Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, in 2005.

"When we first started, none of us knew how to run a company. Ping has really grown at each stage. She always sees through to the root of problems. It's easy for her to talk with both technical people and business people - I think she has a real skill. Personally I enjoy talking with her because she helps me clarify whatever I'm thinking about, she's a great leader that way."³

- Mike Facello, Director of Research and Development,
Raindrop Geomagic, in 2005.

Shaping the Next Revolution

When small pieces of foam insulation broke free from the Discovery space shuttle's external fuel tank during its launch,⁴ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)⁵ experts immediately decided to carry out detailed assessment studies of the possible damage to the protective tiles of the space shuttle. The tile damage seemed minimal, but with the Columbia disaster⁶ preying on their minds, NASA did not want to take any chances. The optical scanned images of the shuttle's underside were sent to Houston⁷ where software, designed by a company called Raindrop Geomagic (Geomagic), was used to create three-dimensional (3D) models of the damaged tiles. An analysis of these models revealed that the damage was not significant enough for repair.

If required, NASA could have used this software to recreate the exact nature of damage on test tiles and evaluate their capacity to withstand the intense heat and stress of shuttle re-entry. Robert Black, a senior engineer with Geomagic, said, "They (NASA) evaluated several tools and said ours was the fastest and most accurate. The driving factor was the speed we could do it at."⁸

Thus Geomagic's software helped NASA quickly evaluate the extent of damage and take suitable measures to ensure the safety of the crew. Ping Fu (Ping), Chairperson, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Geomagic, was one of the main drivers of Geomagic's success. Ping co-founded Geomagic along with her husband, Dr. Herbert Edelsbrunner (Edelsbrunner), an expert in computational geometry and algorithms. The company designed software that helped users to automatically transform products from their scanned physical form into a digital model. This technology, also known as Digital Shape Sampling and Processing (DSSP), was believed to be the next killer application with great potential for the future (Refer to Exhibit I for a note on DSSP).

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1] "Raindrop's Ping Fu Named Entrebizneur of Year," www.tenlinks.com, January 12, 2005.

2] Anne Krishnan, "Aiming to shape revolution," www.newsobserver.com, December 08, 2005.

3] Becky Suzik, "Business Leader's Entrebizneur of 2004 Ping Fu," http://www.businessleader.com, 2005.

4] Space Shuttle Discovery was launched on July 26, 2005.

5] The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), established in 1958, is the main agency responsible for the space exploration programs and scientific aerospace research in the United States of America.

6] On February 1, 2003, the NASA space shuttle, Columbia, burned in the sky while trying to re-enter Earth's atmosphere, resulting in the deaths of the entire seven member crew. The main reason for the accident was the damage done to the shuttle's protective heat shielding tiles by pieces of foam that broke off during launch.

7] The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, houses NASA's Mission Control Center (MCC). The MCC monitors and coordinates all of America's human space flight activities. The JSC also has an astronaut training facility.

8] Colin Sutker, "NASA, Raindrop team up for shuttle safety," http://www.bizjournals.com, July 22, 2005.