Emotive Case Study

For the exclusive use of V. KONKIN

9-510-050

REV: FEBRUARY 16, 2011

ELIE OFEK

JASON RIIS

PAUL HAMILTON

Emotiv Systems Inc.: It’s the Thoughts that Count

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We started this company to revolutionize the way human brains interact with machines.

— Tan Le, President, Emotiv Systems Inc.

Phone calls that went well into the wee hours of the night had become routine for Tan Le,

president and co-founder of Emotiv Systems, Inc. The company’s commercial headquarters were in

San-Francisco’s South of Market district while R&D labs were in Sydney, Australia; the 16-hour time

zone difference often resulted in Le having to be up at “crazy hours.” But the last few months had

been especially intense. Le was trying to reach company consensus on the best way to commercialize

Emotiv’s novel technology. It was 12 a.m. on the U.S. West Coast as her iPhone ran . She could see it

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was Nam Do, Emotiv’s CEO and co-founder, calling from Sydney.

For five years Emotiv scientists, led by renowned physicist Allan Snyder, had toiled on what Le

believed would forever change the way people interface with computers. The R&D team had created

a special headset, called EPOC, which could transmit brain signals wirelessly to any computer, and

developed elaborate software algorithms that could reco nize those signals; in effect, “reading the

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user’s mind.” Without the need to say, touch, or move a thing the system could decipher your facial

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expressions, emotions, and intentions, and then translate those into computer commands. Your

digital avatar could smile when you smiled or frown when you were angry; if you were in a really

good mood a peppy pop song could play in the background, but if your mood suddenly turned more

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serious, a down-tempo song would be selected automatically; you could control the movement and

location of objects on your screen by just thinking about the action you had in mind. In their demos,

Emotiv developers used a floating 3D cube. CEO Do...