Founded by David Martin and Nancy Knowlton in 1987. Originally, the company was the Canadian distributor for a U.S. projector company, and revenue was generated through projector sales. That revenue was directed toward the research and development of the SMART Board interactive whiteboard, which would combine the simplicity of a whiteboard with the power of a computer.
The SMART Board interactive whiteboard was the first interactive whiteboard to provide touch control of computer applications and the ability to write over standard Microsoft Windows applications. Connected to an LCD panel and a computer, the SMART Board interactive whiteboard brought interactive technology to classrooms, meeting rooms and boardrooms. Three patents were granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in recognition of this innovation. Today there are more that 2 million Smartboards installed around the world.
In the early years, Smart Technologies struggled to financially until they gained a strategic partnership with the Intel Corporation. That relationship with Intel was one of the key building blocks in SMART’s history. The equity investment helped SMART’s hardware and software development activities. Perhaps, just as importantly, SMART staff felt something akin to a “seal of approval” for all of the pioneering efforts they had undertaken with the SMART Board interactive whiteboard and in trying to improve the way people work and learn. Over a 25 year period, the company has grown from a two-person start-up to a global company with annual revenues just under $800 million.
David Martin and Nancy Knowlton are a husband and wife team. Nancy has an undergraduate in business administration, she qualified as a charter accountant and she did an entrepreneurially oriented M.B.A. David was an entrepreneur prior to Smart Technologies as he already started up a few business, none of which were quite a successful. Upon the creation of the Interactive White Board Davud and Nancy insured their intellectual properties rights by receiving three patents for the hardware platform. David and Nancy have since left Smart Technologies and have started a new venture Byye Labs: http://www.byyelabs.com/home.html. Even though they have left Smart Technologies if in good hand as you can read in the executive bios: http://investor.smarttech.com/management.cfm.
Smart Technologies interests me for a couple reasons: use and location. I have always been a proponent of use of interactive whiteboards in classrooms and have expanded see the benefit of the use in business meetings. I currently reside in Calgary, Alberta and the corporate headquarters are located here on the University of Calgary campus. I have toured the headquarters a couple times and know a few people who work for Smart Technologies.
I was interested in reading about SMART as I pitched my company to them. We had a lot of interest (since we developed an extensive SMART library) but unfortunately the next month SMART downsized by 25%. Timing is everything in the entrepreneurial world. 🙂
I do wonder if the skills and abilities of an entrepreneur have changed since they started SMART? I think these two were smart (pardon the pun) business people but more “corporate” than entrepreneur. They certainly didn’t see the mobile changes coming – most likely because by that time SMART was a huge company and pivoting wasn’t in the cards. This resulted in the 25% deduction in staff as mentioned earlier.
I’ve seen a few companies – Inspiration, Cambium, Promethean – that road the same wave of technology purchasing in the late 90s and early 2000s before the demand for efficacy and ROI dominated district purchases. These companies often didn’t see the need to change and certainly didn’t see mobile technology changing their companies or their bottom line. They, to me, represented a time when I good idea, some luck and some financing or partnership was often enough. Today I don’t know if that is the case. I think you (and 10 others) may have the same good idea. Differentiating yourself and getting to market first seems to be much more competitive than in the past. Everyone seems to be an entrepreneur…
While working for my PSE institution, I have been dealing with “Smart Technologies” for the last 10 years, and have not been impressed neither with the quality and reliability of their products, nor with the professionalism of their tech support. We have been using their software products on hundreds of computers, as well as Smart Boards and other hardware solutions, and have experienced low reliability and quality of their software/hardware products, and also compared to others, overpricing of their products. Smart is a young company that initially targeted education, non-profit as well as industry needs and sold lots of expensive, but buggy and underdeveloped software/hardware solutions in the last 10 years, though Smart has not been able to keep the decent quality of products and quality of tech support as their top business priority. That way, their year-end stock prices (NASDAQ:SMT) fell from $9.44 in 2010 to $2.19 in 2013. Nowadays, EdTech market is getting saturated with good quality products, so the competitive markets demand the optimum in terms of quality and cost, causing that Smart is losing the ground.
After a series of mixed (read nerve-wracking) experiences with Smart, I would prefer looking and pitching for other quality solutions.