Publication Archives - Barry S. Miller College of Business

As cardboard cutouts occupy the stands at stadiums across the country, sports leagues and teams are dealing with a massive blow to their bottom line. If fans are stuck watching the game from home, it begs the question… how long can sports really be financially viable? Can exclusive, virtual experiences fill the budgetary void left by the absence of ticket sales? Or can the leagues just shoulder the economic consequences until stadiums and arenas are back at full capacity?

Jon Alba:                             The pitcher for the Washington Nationals just knocked this out of the park when he said that sports are like the reward of a functioning society.

Jon Alba:                             [crosstalk 00:00:08].

Jon Alba:                             Mr President.

Paul Jarley:                         If you watched the presidential debate like I did, you might think, well, we don’t deserve sports at all. This show is all about separating height from fundamental change. I’m Paul Jarley, Dean of the College of Business here at UCF. I’ve got lots of questions. To get answers, I’m talking to people with interesting insights into the future of business. Have you ever wondered, is this really a thing? Onto our show.

Paul Jarley:                         Life, for me, had a glimmer of normalcy with this.

Paul Jarley:                         First, it was Korean baseball. Then it was MLS, followed by the NHL, and the NBA. They all started in bubbles. Major League Baseball returned to play in their regular venues, but all these restarts were missing one thing, spectators. The seats were empty. We’ve seen some baby steps towards the return of paying customers and seats in football but the question remains, how long can sports really be a thing if the stadiums are, well, mostly empty?

Paul Jarley:                         Luckily, I know people on the inside who can help us understand what’s going on in sports today. How long this disruption might last and how sports might look different going forward. Listen in.

Paul Jarley:                         Is the current arrangement sustainable financially? How long can the leagues operate without spectators before this becomes a real financial problem?

Shelly Wilkes:                   Well, I can jump in.

Paul Jarley:                         Shelly Wilkes is a graduate of the DeVos Sports Business Management Program here in the college, and was the president of the Lakeland Magic. Now, she’s a senior VP for the parent club, the Orlando Magic.

Shelly Wilkes:                   I think this is not really sustainable. I don’t think it’s sustainable from a society standpoint or a team ownership standpoint. I think that we, as sports leagues, really bring fans together, we bring communities together that’s really what we build our businesses upon, is how do we bring a group of people together to cheer for one common cause. I think that in the short term, everyone understands where we are as a country, where we are as a world with the pandemic. We’re making changes and sacrifices where necessary so that we can continue the game on the field or on the courts. I think everyone wants sports to come back in its entirety. We want to have arenas full.

Shelly Wilkes:                   I mean, you’re seeing even the games that are happening from the NBA standpoint in the bubble. I actually listened to a lot of interviews with the players and though I think everyone’s happy to be playing, it’s not sustainable. You’re missing a sense of energy, you’re missing a sense of comradery and community with the way it’s currently established. Financially, I also don’t think it’s sustainable in the long-term. I know in the NBA, Adam silver has said a few different times that our current financial model has about 40% of our revenues coming from ticket sales and people in the building. So, financially, definitely not a long-term option for us.

Jon Alba:                             I think one of the biggest things that has to be considered in this is the return on investment that media partners are then going to get.

Paul Jarley:                         Jon Alba gives us the media angle under discussion. He’s a sports reporter and anchor for Spectrum Sports on News 13, here in Orlando.

Jon Alba:                             When we had the beginning of this pandemic and there were no sports, there was obviously quite a thirst from spectators. So, they’d be desperate to watch anything. We remember NASCAR went the route of having the iRacing, the electronic racing that fans were turning in, in droves just to watch. Where now… Kind of what Shelly was saying, where you have 40% of the NBA league model set up on spectators actually being in attendance for.

Jon Alba:                             Well, in the last 10 years, 20 years especially, we’ve seen these huge media rights deals become the main proprietor and driver of these gigantic league revenues that we see. If the media partners aren’t feeling like they’re getting a return on investment, I don’t see how any way there would be any sustainability without fans in the stands.

Paul Jarley:                         Jon, if I can follow up on that. First, let me admit to watching Korean baseball games-

Jon Alba:                             There you go.

Paul Jarley:                         … six o’clock in the morning. Life was desperate for a while. But, is viewership up or down for the leagues? I haven’t actually followed that.

Jon Alba:                             I think it’s a case-by-case thing where you will see there’s an immediate payoff for some, and then it slowly drags off, whereas some other leagues may not necessarily be experiencing that. The content right now, that people are most interested in, is national news and national news is doing record numbers for a variety of reasons right now. I think that, that has maybe slowed down some sports, but there are also other sports who are thriving tremendously at this time. Right now, especially referring to the NBA, they’ve got a chance to grab a ton of eyes as they march towards the NBA finals here.

Brian Wright:                     Yeah. I think, as John mentioned, there’s a certain target demographic where ratings are doing extremely well.

Paul Jarley:                         Brian Wright is the general manager of the San Antonio Spurs. In fact, he’s the youngest GM in the NBA. He’s a graduate of our DeVos Program and is the youngest alumni ever inducted in the College of Business Hall of Fame at UCF.

Brian Wright:                     I think the NBA has been the most viewed television program, broadcast and cable among adults, 1849 on 20 of the 25 nights of playoff coverage so far. Obviously, it’s at a point in time when we started in the summer where historically, television viewership rates are at a lower place than when they are at other points in time. I think it’s really done well, but again, I think the entire pandemic has disrupted our way of life as a society and it’s disrupted the sports industry.

Brian Wright:                     I think from that, you’ll see some things that, obviously, to Shelly and Jon’s point, need to change in order for the model to be sustainable. But that disruption probably caused us to look at how we provide content to our fans, to our media partners, et cetera, that create a unique and different experience for those that may not be in the building. And I think there’s a ton to be learned there/

Paul Jarley:                         Let me play with some alternative versions of the future, if you don’t mind, and tell me whether I’m nuts or not. Let’s go there for a minute.

Paul Jarley:                         The bubbles seem to work in the sense that they protect the players from the virus, they’re able to sustain the game. Could you imagine traveling bubbles where the teams and the leagues go from city to city perhaps where the virus is low and would have fans there? I’m taking the example of… I know they do this in rugby, some, and I know they do it in lacrosse where the entire league will go to a particular venue and they will make it a carnival atmosphere for the weekend, and they’ll play a variety of games there. Majorly, baseball is doing something sort of similar without the fans for the playoffs. Anybody think that’s a workable idea?

Shelly Wilkes:                   I think that in the short-term, as a short-term solution, getting to the next phase of what’s playing in a pandemic looks like, I certainly think that, that is probably one of the many options on the table. Again, Jon mentioned this too, I think in the long-term when we go back to the sustainability model of leagues, we do have a lot of revenue and ticket sales but we have a lot of revenue and partnership deals. And when you don’t have people in your stance and you’re not able to take care of your partners within the building with the rights that they have purchased, whatever those marketing rights may be, I think you’re setting yourself up for failure in the long-term again. Based on not having your home game experience, your home right experiences, I just… I think it’s long-term sustainable. I think that it, again, could be a short-term solution to get us past the pandemic, but I can’t imagine that’s going to be something that could live on for years.

Shelly Wilkes:                   To Brian’s point, it could be something when we talk about spreading the game. I mean, not in a bubble format, but you could almost say that that’s what we do on the international scale on the NBA is we take a couple of teams over to Europe or over to China, and we play in a couple of different cities and in that kind of festival atmosphere, and that’s really for fan building and sand growth. So, not in the bubble atmosphere, but kind of the same model of bringing the sport to different places. But in the pandemic and how we really solve for where we are, I just don’t think that that would be a sustainable model for teams or for leagues.

Paul Jarley:                         What would be hard to do over 82 games, but if you’re playing an 18 game schedule like the NFL, I don’t know.

Jon Alba:                             Well, allow me to kind of play devil’s advocate here as the one who covers the sport rather than working on the inside of it. Maybe it comes down to the point where you have to reconsider what your model is for profiting and for how you distribute your money. The reality is, in a lot of sports… I’m not necessarily saying the NBA because I do think the NBA is a relatively affordable fan experience, but there are a lot of sports where you go to a Major League Baseball game, there’s 81 home games a year for a team and the average day at the ballpark for a single person is going to run you well over a 100 bucks if not more, whereas the original model used to be sustainable in that it costs you maybe a grand total of 20 bucks to go to a ball game.

Jon Alba:                             The average fan has been out priced. So, they’re consuming the sports in a different way where now you get your big TV at home, you got your smartphone, there are different ways they can consume it without having to spend all that money to go to the ballpark, to go to the stadium, to go to the arena. I covered the combat sports industry pretty in depth, including WWE, which has rented out Amway Center here in Orlando for-

Paul Jarley:                         Good example.

Jon Alba:                             … a two months day, and they ended up putting all these video screens, even five times more than what the NBA had going. By doing that, they have saved… And I’m not exaggerating when I’m saying this, they’ve saved tens of millions of dollars on production costs that they may reevaluate once things start to become “normal”, where they don’t have to go on the road as much and spend all those production costs because they know that fans can consume the content in a different way and they can cut back on traveling.

Paul Jarley:                         Brian, thoughts?

Brian Wright:                     I’m kind of like you, I always just think of why not. Having a regional type of setup, like you mentioned, I think the difficulty with that comes with logistics and costs and how often… How long are you in each city? How many games are you playing? That type of thing. But I do think, just from a plank standpoint, if you look at the performances in the bubble, it’s been an unbelievable playoff run for a magnitude reasons. I think you do start to ask yourself, well, what’s different? What’s changed? What’s caused it to go so well? For the games to be so good, for it to be so competitive. Is it about travel? Is it about rest? Is it… There are a lot of different things that you can factor in, and the one thing you know that you want back are the fans in the building for that energy and environment.

Brian Wright:                     But I do think there’s a lot of things that you can learn from that five years from now may alter the way that the game is produced or where… How it looks. Some of that, to what you mentioned, could be a cost issue, and also how long are we in this type of pandemic situation. But I do think, again, there’s some learnings that caused you to ask, why not? And then what does… How does that alter the game or the experience for the fans or what have you for the next five to 10 years moving forward.

Paul Jarley:                         Let me go to my craziest thought on this. If we can do this without fans and we can maintain viewership, when will a network say, “Well, this is just a TV show. Why don’t we own it and eliminate the middlemen?”, which would be the leagues. I mean, the WWE model is an interesting one, Jon.

Jon Alba:                             Yeah, [crosstalk 00:13:23]-

Paul Jarley:                         That’s pretty close to it.

Jon Alba:                             … it is pretty close to it. Right now, WWE is in the middle of it’s most lucrative contracts that it’s ever had with Fox Broadcast and with the USA Network and NBCUniversal. But at the end of the day, we are talking about the leagues are the ones that are providing the service and they are so well-established and ingrained in American sports society that we’ve seen networks attempt to have startups, and they just have not been successful, or with new startups. So, I’m not so sure that that’s something that’s on the immediate horizon.

Paul Jarley:                         Anyone else have thoughts about?

Shelly Wilkes:                   I just think that there’s a lot more that goes into the game on the court than the game on the court. I think trying to have a network get into a business that is not really their core business because there are, in Brian’s world alone, just the recruitment of players, the… Keeping people wanting to come to play the cities, which is its own thing, wanting them to be a part of different teams. And maybe in your model there’s not cities, right? There’s broadcast rights and you’re playing for your team regardless of where you live.

Shelly Wilkes:                   But I think that there’s a lot of pieces that go together to create a culture of winning on the basketball court that has nothing to do with the program of the game, the two and a half hour broadcast, right? There’s a lot more pieces of heart of building a team. I struggled with that one a bit as well. It is a crazy idea and I love that you’re thinking outside the box about how we can sustain sports in what could be a longer term situation here. But I do struggle with that one just because of all the other pieces that go into maintaining a sports team.

Paul Jarley:                         Yeah, I’m not sure if that it wouldn’t even come down to financial risk sharing. I mean, that would be a lot to take on, right? As a television entity. I don’t know.

Paul Jarley:                         Yeah. It’s something I… I’m not sure that it’s out of the realm of possibility. I agree with you that I don’t think it’s immediate, but if things continue for a while… Because I’m not sure how much longer this financial sustainability for the leagues is going to be.

Paul Jarley:                         So, when do you think things are going to get back to normal? Anybody got thoughts on that?

Jon Alba:                             That’s a loaded question right there. I think you have to determine what is normal, right? That’s kind of where things start.

Jon Alba:                             I just think this Sean Doolittle, the pitcher for the Washington Nationals, just knocked this out of the park when he said sports are like the reward of a functioning society. And right now, we are just so far from that on so many different levels. You can obviously hope for a vaccine, you can hope for a bunch of other things to fall into place from a health standpoint, but then there are the other things, and we’ve seen how impassioned… Obviously, Brian and Shelly can speak more to this than I can, but the impassion response of these players to what’s happening in American society, I think that’s a real thing and that’s a real tangible effect on their mental psyche. To me, that’s why it’s all the more impressive why you have two teams like the Heat and the Lakers who have managed to get to the NBA finals and make it this far because of the mental toll that this season has taken. So as far as normalcy, I’m really not sure on that.

Paul Jarley:                         Well, it’s a lot easier to control the players than it is the fans. I mean, witness what happened at Florida State a couple of weekends ago, right? Where mask wearing was not common, if I could put it that way. It’s hard for me to imagine, without an effective vaccine, that we’re going to get back to normal anytime soon.

Paul Jarley:                         Anybody else have thoughts on that?

Paul Jarley:                         I think the NBA has got a whole nother season to go through, per example.

Shelly Wilkes:                   Yeah. I think we… I don’t know what normal looks like either, I don’t know when that happens. I mean, you listen to Dr. [Fouche 00:17:44] and he’s telling you end the next year. Then again, it goes back what’s normal, right? Do we want to go back to normal? I know personally, for me, when we just talk about the work world and where we’re at. We’re still working remotely and it’s kind of changed my perspective on the need for a commute every day and rushing out the door with my two daughters, and really kind of accepting that this is okay, and that we can slow down a little bit. So, I think there’s some good that is coming out of this. I think the social justice movement that has been happening, I think, has had so many eyeballs on it because we were speaking earlier about people really paying attention to the news.

Shelly Wilkes:                   There’s not a lot else, they’re home. They’re really paying attention to what’s happening and I think that movement is so powerful because people are paying attention, finally. I think again, do we want to go back to normal? What does normal mean? The… When we get back… When we talked about normal, just in sports and having full arenas with 20,000 fans in the NBA, however many in the NFL day-to-day, I do think we have some time still.

Shelly Wilkes:                   I think we have time. I think even after the vaccine comes out, I think people… There’s going to be just a change in behavior. A comfortability with being around one another, a comfortability of trusting the vaccine and trusting how the medical world is responding. So, I think we’re a solid 9 to 12 months from what we would maybe consider normal. I hope it’s sooner than that. I know the NBA, we’re strongly pushing to play in front of fans and figuring out a way to do that. Whether that’s… If there’s rapid testing opportunities, if there’s shifting how… Capacity levels in buildings, that kind of stuff. So we’re paying very close attention to what college football and the NFL is doing right now, and hopeful that we can find a solution for the 2021 season that allows us to have fans in our buildings.

Paul Jarley:                         Brian, do you see fans in the building in the upcoming season?

Brian Wright:                     We hope, and you see it with the NFL where they’re operating in some places with limited fans, same thing in College. I do think, as Shelly said, that’s the goal. I think we’ll get there. I think the biggest thing, and both Jon and Shelly mentioned it, was you’ve got to define your new normal and that’s everything from experiences to interactions and how the game is played. So, I think as long as you’re open to listening, and I think that’s where the NBA has been far and above a lot of sports leagues is… From everything, from the social justice initiatives to creating a bubble and safe environment to thinking about how we move forward. Great organizations that lead through this situation have to be great listening organizations. What do your fans want to feel comfortable? What do your players need to feel comfortable? What does the environment have to be like to have everybody comfortable, but also create an experience that’s fun and exciting and entertainment for everyone?

Brian Wright:                     So, I think the new normal will start with being a great listening organization and understanding the needs of who you’re serving and building out from there allows us to create what that new normal is. And again, if we think normal will be just going right back to the way it was, I think there’s an opportunity loss to grow. If you look in every industry, disruption is something that changes it for the better, oftentimes, and COVID has definitely been a disruption to this business.

Brian Wright:                     Some of it is definitely negative, but I do think there’ll be some positive things that we can learn from it. Shelly mentioned the remote work and work from home, and what does that allow you to do when you look at hiring talent and bringing people into your organization. If you have remote work, that expands your landscape and pool that you can choose from. So, there are a lot of different things that we will learn from this situation and hopefully come out better, but it starts with being an incredible listening organization and league, and I think to this point, the NBA has done a amazing job at that.

Jon Alba:                             Well, isn’t it amazing too that we’ve packed 20,000 people into arenas and never had hand sanitizing stations before? To me, it’s just even starts with things as remedial as that.

Paul Jarley:                         How do you think, though, it’ll change the fan experience going forward? Brian touched on this a little bit, but if you had two or three things that you might think would fundamentally change going forward, what might it be?

Shelly Wilkes:                   Well, I think you’re seeing it right now. I mean, in Orlando we’ve moved this way and I know a lot of sport teams are moving this way. Just from the ease of food ordering, and delivery to seats, and entering the building with your mobile device versus printing tickets. I think that the technology advances that are going to happen, I think that that alone will increase… I mean, my husband actually works for Disney and Technology, and they’re seeing… Previously before the pandemic, they had mobile food ordering and they had a minimal amount of people, maybe 9% a day, actually utilizing that experience and now it’s over 90%, are mobile ordering from restaurants. That’s how they’re ensuring safety for capacity numbers and food delivery, et cetera. I think that you’ll start to see a much greater technology adoption, which does create a better fan experience from that standpoint.

Shelly Wilkes:                   And then I think, to Brian’s earlier point, we’re figuring out how to include people in the game experience who are not actually in the building. I think the WWE has done a fantastic job of that. The NBA has done a great job from the bubble, and I think that we will start to innovate and find new ways to expand the game experience outside of those 18,000 people that are at a game. I think all of those advances will be hugely rewarding for the teams and for the fans as part of the experience. But I’m sure that this is going to have a long-term ripple effect for those positive advances as well.

Paul Jarley:                         Does that also provide new revenue stream opportunities for you?

Shelly Wilkes:                   Absolutely, I mean-

Paul Jarley:                         With those new forms of engagement.

Shelly Wilkes:                   … yeah. Even if you think about what the league has done with the virtual fans experience. That was a new partner with Michelob ULTRA, they were not a partner of the league. They came on board for that experience. Microsoft came on board and launched that experience within this past six months. So, you’re already seeing, at the league level, how there are business opportunities and business advances because of that.

Paul Jarley:                         Jon, how do you think sports coverage will change going forward? Do you think there are impacts there?

Jon Alba:                             Yeah. I think one thing that we’re seeing now is virtual coverage is significantly easier to do than what some others had maybe asserted beforehand. I can even speak personally, the idea of doing a virtual interview for a story that I was putting together would have been absolute last case scenario, if not impossible when putting together pieces whereas now, that’s a very real alternative that I would say has become the norm, more than anything else in this period.

Jon Alba:                             I could definitely see that opening up a whole new can of worms in terms of who gets access to sporting events because with that, you can now credential bloggers. You could credential people who don’t consistently cover an NBA franchise. Maybe that’s for better, maybe that’s for worse, I’m not really sure how I feel about that, but it definitely creates more accessibility in that regard. But on the flip side of that, I can say that being in a locker room, covering players after games, you pick up on things that maybe the person on the Zoom call wouldn’t be able to pick up on. Whether it’s body language or you hear something, and as a reporter your job is to be that mediator, to provide that link between consumer and product. So, I could see there being some pretty radical changes in that regard.

Paul Jarley:                         All right then. One last question. I’m going to ask each of you answer this. Is sports without spectators still going to be a thing two years from now? Yes or no? And why.

Jon Alba:                             What’s funny is I feel like when you have dissenters, people who are like, “Well, let’s be cautious. Let’s be careful”, then you get this whole backlash of, how dare you not be optimistic, how dare you assert that. But I think we’ll have spectators back within the next… I think the timeframe that Shelley gave is perfect, 9 to 12 months. To what degree, I’m not entirely sure.

Jon Alba:                             I think the more fascinating aspect of all of this will be to see how teams and franchises and entities adapt and bring in these new business models that present sports in a way that we haven’t been familiar with in the past, whether that’s in-person, whether that’s virtually, whether it’s from a media coverage standpoint, and see how we continue to evolve because sports and sports coverage and sports presentation have evolved so much in the last 10, 15 years as is. So, for as terrible as the circumstances have been, maybe it will provide some pretty cool opportunities going forward.

Paul Jarley:                         Shelly.

Shelly Wilkes:                   Yeah, it’s my business to be optimistic in this. So, I strongly believe we will have full arenas in two years. I think we will inch our way there over the next 12 months and figure out what’s going to be the safest for our players, our fans, our staff. But I absolutely have to believe that in two years we will be playing in front of spectators and that the sports industry will come back. It’s historically been the thing that brings people back together after tragedy and after issues that have happened in our communities, and we will be there once we’re able to do that as well.

Paul Jarley:                         Brian, you get the last word, my friend,

Brian Wright:                     Well, Shelly was ahead of me in the divorce program so I’m just going to follow her lead.

Brian Wright:                     I’m an eternal optimist as well. So, I do believe that it will happen, but I also believe that we’ll come out better because I think we’re going to have a newfound appreciation for the fan that does not enter the building. What does their experience look like on a daily basis? How are they interacting with your team, your brand as you build out moving forward? And I think that’s only going to make the power of sports, the leagues and the teams that much stronger.

Brian Wright:                     We’ll understand digital better, we’ll understand virtual fan experiences a lot better. I think how we come out of this on the back end will be that much different. Shelly has always been a leader, so I’ll just continue to follow Shelly’s lead on the optimism. But I do think we will get fans back in the building, and I do think this will create an opportunity for us to build a whole new fan experience that maybe we hadn’t captured prior to the pandemic.

Paul Jarley:                         Well, thank you all for participating.

Paul Jarley:                         Brian, you have a future in politics. If that’s the way that you want to go, my friend, but I kind of already knew that.

Paul Jarley:                         Shelly, I think you hit on the key point here. Consumers are going to decide this, not the leagues.

Shelly Wilkes:                   Yep. Exactly.

Paul Jarley:                         I mean, they’ve got to feel safe coming back in huge numbers. That’s going to be the key. It’s kind of hard to know when that will actually be, but I certainly look forward to the day when I can travel to Lakeland for watching my Tigers spring training games. Can’t come soon enough.

Paul Jarley:                         Hopefully things get back to normal here within the next year. But I do think it’s going to be a year, I do.

Paul Jarley:                         It’s my podcast, so I get to go last. I think I may have asked the wrong question today. My dad was a Detroit Tiger fan for 83 years. He was a fan long before he was a spectator. In fact, I think he probably only attended a dozen games in his entire life. The Tigers, for him, were Ernie Harwell’s voice on the radio. He listened to every game, every season. He, of course, was not alone. The pandemic has made it painfully clear that there has always been more fans than spectators.

Paul Jarley:                         Brian used the phrase virtual fan. I know that’s code for how to monetize the fan base, but I’m still not exactly sure I know how the virtual offense experience will be different than my dad’s or the typical television viewer. During this weird year of 2020, it certainly includes fans on electronic screens at NBA and MLS tournament games, but I doubt that’ll last longer than the day stadiums are back to full capacity. If the virtual fan is a long-term thing, they are probably shelling out money for some new subscription service, a social media platform, or maybe both.

Paul Jarley:                         Maybe 10 years from now, we’ll see 2020 as the birth of the virtual fan and a shift in the revenue base for sports leagues, or just maybe we’ll be back to increasing ticket prices at stadiums filled to capacity. What do you think? Check us out online and share your thoughts at business.ucf.edu/podcast.

Paul Jarley:                         You can also find extended interviews with our guests and notes from the show. Special thanks to my producer, Josh Miranda, and the whole team at the Office of Outreach & Engagement here at the UCF College of Business. And thank you for listening. Until next time, charge on.

Listen to all episodes of “Is This Really a Thing?” at business.ucf.edu/podcast.

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Paul Jarley:                         2020 has been the year of the coronavirus, and big money is being put in to find a vaccine. But what if I told you that the spread of COVID isn’t a medical problem, but rather an engineering one. And that two UCF Aerospace Engineers might have a simple, low-cost solution. Would you invest in their project?

Paul Jarley:                         This show is all about separating hype from fundamental change. I’m Paul Jarley, Dean of the College of Business here at UCF. I’ve got lots of questions. To get answers, I’m talking to people with interesting insights into the future of business. Have you ever wondered, is this really a thing? Onto our show.

Paul Jarley:                         Ideas come from unexpected places. Listen to Michael Kinzel, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCF. Explain the origin of the idea for a COVID cough drop.

Michael Kinzel:                 It was kind of funny, right? My wife was arguing with one of our neighbors on Facebook, about aerosols and how far they can kind of pass from one person to another. And one of the things about aerosols is they’re very small, and if you cough, for example, at that time, they were showing that… Actually not cough, sneeze, if you sneeze, they were showing that these aerosols can travel at 27 feet. My wife was arguing with neighbors like, “Hey, you need to be careful as you go by somebody, maybe move out of the sidewalk.” Because of these aerosols. And it drove me to think, how do you make these… What do we do in engineering to make things not form aerosols?

Michael Kinzel:                 And one of the things that drives that is underlying fluid dynamics processes that associated with how thick your fluid is. So for example, if you think about trying to make small droplets out of oil, it’s a lot more difficult than making small droplets out of water, or even on the other end alcohol. So this is kind of driving, it was kind of, how do you get to a scenario where you don’t enable droplets to travel 27 feet? And if you make them large, they’re no longer aerosols and they have a tendency to fall. So one way to potentially enable that is by making a lozenge that actually alters your saliva. So that it behaves or has a tendency to form these large droplets that don’t persist for very long distances.

Paul Jarley:                         Okay. So first, Michael, your wife has strange conversations with neighbors.

Michael Kinzel:                 Oh yeah, she is. She argues with her neighbors all the time on Facebook.

Paul Jarley:                         I assume at some point you brought in Kareem on this.

Paul Jarley:                         Kareem Ahmed, is director of the propulsing and energy research lab at UCF. And like Michael, he’s an assistant professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Paul Jarley:                         Kareem, what did you think about this?

Kareem Ahmed:               I mean, so we do biofuels research and the alteration of the saliva is a similar reminiscent sort of effect that we study with biofuels where change viscosity and surface tension. And yeah, I mean, that’s the thoughts back then, where it’s a fluid dynamic problem. It’s similar to the expulsion that you have from an engine, same principle that has happening here. It’s just a lower force. And by having this different properties, if your saliva using a loss [inaudible 00:00:03:49], so it impacts its atomization process. So it’s a basic simple principle actually.

Paul Jarley:                         So why didn’t anybody think of this before?

Kareem Ahmed:               Well, it’s just because there isn’t a need for something like this. I think here it’s when you’re bound to the closures and the pandemic and thinking outside the box, why isn’t anybody doing this? Well, first is, I mean, we are human, right? So we want to drink water. We don’t want to have a foreign saliva altering object in our mouth.

Kareem Ahmed:               And in this case, it’s sort of a need, it’s the same thing like the face mask. We don’t want our face mask on our nose and mouth, but it’s a need right now. And I think that’s why nobody thought of it is because of this.

Michael Kinzel:                 I was going to add that people had in the past thought about almost like a nebulizer that focused on the lungs, but nobody’s ever focused on the mouth. So, that’s I think are the unique aspect that we’re doing, and it seems to be pretty effective.

Paul Jarley:                         Is this a potential solution for things other than COVID?

Michael Kinzel:                 Oh, most certainly. Like colds, flus, I think in terms of a longterm application, yeah. Like if somebody has a flu, you may prescribe them some, not prescribed them, you may have them take these lozenge and they’ll have a less chance to transmit flu to one person.

Paul Jarley:                         You touched on another one of my questions here, Michael. So this would be an over-the-counter product?

Michael Kinzel:                 This is kind of where we have kind of a, we’re in a little bit of a bind because when we talk to FDA, they say, “As long as we don’t make a specific claim that this product…” Like if we don’t have a specific claim, we do not need FDA approval, hence it’s over-the-counter. It’s not even an FDA approved treatment, which is the same for a mask, by the way, it’s not FDA approved either because they haven’t done all the clinical studies.

Michael Kinzel:                 In fact, I think a couple of years ago they found that dental floss wasn’t FDA approved to improve your teeth health, but that approval process gives you kind of like buy-in or added, it essentially it gives you more, yes, the FDA says that this actually functions. And in either case, I think it would be over-the-counter because it’s non medicinal. But I think maybe one question is, do we go after FDA approval to be able to make a specific claim on transmission reduction of things like COVID?

Paul Jarley:                         But what about the additives that changed the viscosity of the saliva, or are there any hurdles there? I mean, what are you adding to it?

Michael Kinzel:                 These are just over-the-counter, kind of like food grade thickeners, things that you would put in your, like in cooking. For example-

Paul Jarley:                         Can I have a little flour-

Michael Kinzel:                 Not flour, but like cornstarch and so forth.

Paul Jarley:                         Okay.

Michael Kinzel:                 And things that are… We’re trying to refine our ingredients so that it doesn’t, one that it stays, so it still functions in the context of a lozenge or some other treatment and to making it as comfortable as possible. I don’t know if you have any other comments, Kareem.

Kareem Ahmed:               Yeah. I mean, they’re just off the shelf ingredients that just simply alter your saliva and things like peanut flour, for example, but the alter is the saliva and it makes it highly viscous and reduces your optimization process from a sneeze or a cough, or even a loud speaking. So things of that nature that you could use, you could go exotic with formulated formulas, but for now it’s organic based off the shelf components. It’s like you’re chewing on a piece of bread, it affects your saliva in the absorption and it’s viscosity, so that’s the same principle.

Paul Jarley:                         You might remember Mike Pape from our earlier podcast on, “Starting a business without any money.” He is the Dr. Phillips entrepreneur in residence, and professor of practice in the College of Business. Dr. Pape, do you have any take on the FDA component on this?

Michael Pape:                   Yes. For the FDA, you can use the ingredients called GRAS. G-R-A-S, Generally Regarded as Safe. So if you use those types of ingredients, they mentioned the cornstarch, yeah, I mean, you could do that in a product than do it over-the-counter, and marketed in such a way that it has appeal to some customer segment.

Paul Jarley:                         Well, it would seem like time is of the essence here. I mean, we’d all like to think that there’s going to be some solutions to this COVID virus soon. Is the FDA process a lengthy one, Dr. Pape? Would it take them a long time?

Michael Pape:                   Well, I don’t know if you wouldn’t necessarily have go through that route. You can just use a GRAS ingredient and you can then market it from as you desire. I guess the thing here is, at least from hearing the conversation, what I’ve heard is cough drop, but it really wouldn’t be a cough drop because cough drops, they have menthol in them and it’s derivatives, which are analgesics, which suppress the cough reflex.

Michael Pape:                   So those are very different things. Even those can be ingredients that you don’t necessarily have that FDA approval of, because they’re so used and they’re generic in nature, but this one looks like a saliva viscosity enhancer. However, you’d want to market that for somebody. That’s what it is.

Michael Kinzel:                 Yeah. It’s essentially a confection. I would call it a confection, it’s not really a cough drop of-

Michael Pape:                   There we go. Okay.

Michael Kinzel:                 Most people think of… Well, when I say confection, not everybody knows what a confection is. So the media use cough drops as the generic term.

Michael Pape:                   Yeah, I know. There’s one thing that… Because this is about different solutions. And then there’s the face mask, there’s the face shield, there’s the distancing. And I think everybody would agree that they’re like three leaky buckets for these aerosols and for respiratory droplets and by squishy three buckets together that have holes in it, maybe you can reduce the leakage.

Michael Pape:                   And it looks like this would fit in the category where it’d be a fourth item if you will, that could reduce the leakage. So there might be a case there, but when I think about the solution, yes, you could this confectionary idea. I get it, but you can also reduce the droplets if you will. And it wouldn’t necessarily be viscosity, but you could do it by, I don’t know, I guess drawing out people’s mouth.

Kareem Ahmed:               One of the ingredients actually, and Mike was going to touch on it. We do have a ginger that does tend to do that, reduce your saliva production.

Michael Pape:                   I’ll give you a recommendation for that. Paul and I, are big baseball fans. And we used to buy, I am sure, and just like he did, like I did, we would go buy Topps baseball cards every week, hoping there were Detroit tigers in there. And they would have this bad piece of gum, and we thought it was sent from heaven. When we chew it, and it would go stale in about a minute and dry out your mouth.

Paul Jarley:                         It was terrible.

Michael Pape:                   It was terrible. But we would chew it, and licked through the cards. It was the best clean ever.

Kareem Ahmed:               The cards smell great.

Michael Pape:                   Right, it did. But those are just different solutions, but that same idea of trying to put it in with the current regime of reduction of respiratory droplets and aerosols.

Paul Jarley:                         Mike, I think your card point is kind of relevant here because one of the questions I had is, why would I buy it? Because honestly I’m protecting others, not myself.

Michael Kinzel:                 Personally, I think that that’s the biggest hurdle we have. And because of that, I do not think it’s… I think that there’s probably a few different market or markets to hit and it wouldn’t be the general market, the general person. It might be kind of like, I kind of tried to classify them in my own words, but kind of like a regulated workforce. So you think of like the healthcare, military and elderly homes. People where you have to, places where they have to be together, but they could actually demand, “Hey, you need to take these things and it’ll help reduce spread of disease and so forth.” It seems like the obvious first market to hit.

Paul Jarley:                         Or how about college students to show up on campus.

Michael Kinzel:                 I think that it would be really hard to [crosstalk 00:12:56].

Paul Jarley:                         Yeah. Cameron, what do you think?

Paul Jarley:                         Cameron Ford is an associate professor in our management department, and is the founding director of the UCF Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Paul Jarley:                         What do you think about that problem? Yeah.

Cameron Ford:                  Well, first off, I think this is a really interesting kind of creative solution in that it is, he came up with an analogy in between the aerosols, from the sneezing and everything like that, to these viscosity issues you guys deal with in your engineering research. So making that connection is one of the things I really enjoy seeing people do, and using one thing as an analogy for something else and then thinking for brand new solutions. That was a really cool aspect of your story.

Cameron Ford:                  I think, I’m always looking at use scenarios for something like this, and trying to figure out whether if the solution by itself can address a problem or maybe in combination with something else. So, one thing I’m thinking about as I’m listening to you guys, is whether this is an ingredient that might be combined with something else, like a decongestant or something like that, that people might take as a better version of whatever it is they’re using to deal with like a common cold or something like that.

Cameron Ford:                  The other thing I was thinking of doing by itself, or specific use scenarios. And who would be the 100 most desperate people to use something like this. I’m trying to think of, I don’t know, meat processing plants, places like that.

Paul Jarley:                         For someone who has someone-

Cameron Ford:                  Like Paul’s kind of thinking where it’s kind of high incident rates where maybe an employer could enforce utilization and it would solve their problem-

Paul Jarley:                         Or a susceptible family member maybe, Cameron?

Cameron Ford:                  Yeah. Something like that, maybe.

Paul Jarley:                         That would be another category I thought about.

Michael Kinzel:                 Yeah.

Cameron Ford:                  The people are trying to either, in the global way of thinking about this kind of, and people are buying something or either trying to achieve a positive outcome or avoid a negative outcome. This is clearly a scenario where you’re trying to help people avoid negative outcomes. So getting your relatives sick, getting a child sick, getting a coworker sick, those would be the kinds of scenarios. So what are the worst ones of those that you can imagine, and then maybe focus on those.

Michael Pape:                   Yeah. I agree with Cameron. There’s a product market fit issue, and Michael mentioned that. And the idea is who would be an early adopter of this? It wouldn’t be for the masses. It doesn’t seem like you’re going to pop one of these in your mouth before you go into public, to protect other people.

Michael Pape:                   But if you have an acute situation with the relative, I’ll give you an example. Like my mom, she’s 87, she’s in a senior living facility and that senior living facility, it’s up in Michigan, they have a gazebo out there. You have to rent the space for an hour. Family members walk around on the lawn to sit out there in chairs that are far apart and they got to be masked, but you could see using and mandating something like this be used in the senior living facility, and family members utilizing it. If it can be acted on quickly, I think they could possibly mandate something like that.

Cameron Ford:                  Yeah. To piggyback on Mike, I would suggest that there’s places where the use of this might be mandated for some kind of broader benefit for a population of people that are maybe in a prison or in a nursing home or other high incident places that might be a good way of doing it. Because to Paul’s earlier point, this isn’t something would probably be real pleasant to consume. So it might be better to have it in an environment where they’re doing it for some other reason.

Paul Jarley:                         So gentlemen, how long do you think it will take you to get into market? Michael and Kareem.

Michael Kinzel:                 Yeah. One of the things that we were… So our goal was to get it to market as fast as possible. So our initial thinking was, “Okay, why don’t we hit up the companies already developing lozenges or other kinds of things like the Nicorette gum.” But we have not had much success going with a licensing option with that, which would be licensing out our technology to one of these larger corporations.

Michael Kinzel:                 So we’re still trying to do that. And we feel like if we could get it licensed, they could get out to market very quickly because it’s really not that complicated of a feat. But what we’re doing now is trying on our own and exploring options to get funding, to push it out to market, but then it has other issues. Because we have to worry about getting it into supermarkets or getting it purchased by like the elderly homes or healthcare companies, right? It’s a lot more complicated when you pushing things out to marketing, and getting buy-in and so forth. We really were hoping the licensing option would have worked, but I don’t know if maybe we’ve missed, we haven’t hit the right companies interested in it so far.

Paul Jarley:                         Is this an idea you can patent?

Michael Kinzel:                 Yeah. It is patentable. Yeah, that’s bottom line.

Paul Jarley:                         Michael and Cameron, you got any potential partners in mind for these guys?

Cameron Ford:                  I was wondering if you’ve spoken to any food co-packers or other food manufacturing outfits that might be able to work with.

Michael Kinzel:                 We’ve mostly spoke to a lot of the big pharmaceutical companies like Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, GSK, a few other companies. And I don’t know, maybe we’re hitting the wrong routes, but we didn’t get any interest from them. But we also tried like with Ricola, but we have not hit up some of the… I think probably the best one is that, I forget what it’s called Melendez or the one that owns Halls and Nabisco. They might be another one to hit up, but yeah.

Cameron Ford:                  I was wondering about some food co-packing companies that may have excess capacity and might be able to give you a fairly good rate for manufacturing, to what were you talking about, but then you would have to put up money to make that happen.

Michael Kinzel:                 So that is, literally this week we’re putting in, we’re trying to get find ways to fund this and we’re exploring options of getting investments, but we’re also exploring government SBIR routes as well. And I think once we… If we’re able to get funds through that, that might be, I think that’s an excellent idea. When you say a co-packing, I guess I’m not completely clear what these kinds of-

Michael Pape:                   Well, this is Michael. Kareem, correct me if you see it differently, but there are plenty of places that make, let’s say vitamins or various things, and they do the packaging. So all you do is you set up an agreement with them, and if these are just off the shelf kind of ingredients, they can make Primal pills, they can pump these out. And they can sell them under private label. You can put your own label on there, it looks like it’s coming from your own company. And it would be a marketing play, basically.

Michael Pape:                   And you would just have to market appropriately. You could do that online. You might have some boots on the ground that could go to senior living facilities in the area, and get some validation from them. And then you’re on your way. And you just put on your website, you would put the data that you have generated in the lab instead of a white paper, and that would be your basis for marketing.

Michael Kinzel:                 I got you. Yeah, I did see these, I didn’t know what they were called, but that does make it practical from a startup point of view, I think-

Michael Pape:                   They’re like outsource manufacturer.

Michael Kinzel:                 Yeah, it’s-

Cameron Ford:                  Now, would you be able to make batches of this in a home kitchen or a small commercial kitchen?

Michael Pape:                   You’re thinking farmers market, like I was thinking?

Cameron Ford:                  Well, kind of. I mean, this is the kind of thing where they, you can legally manufacture food in a home setting under a craft food arrangement, and then you could take boxes of these things to various kinds of places like Mike has described, and see what people think. Do they taste so nasty they would never want to use them? Do they see some value? It would give you a lower risk way of seeing how people respond to the product before you put a bunch of money in to manufacturing a whole ton of it, and then having it end up in your garage.

Michael Kinzel:                 Yeah. They are easy to make. The problem that we always have with the, it’s not nasty, but for example, we can make a new batch. I mean, I made a few batches of [inaudible 00:21:39] in it. It took about an hour each. It’s not overly time consuming, it’s just getting the ingredients correct.

Michael Kinzel:                 And I think the other thing we’re trying to work through is testing. How do we make and test, make and test, make and test as fast as possible? Because we have our testing equipment that we have, but it could take a while. So we’re trying to refine that process, develop a very fast development than test type methodology. I don’t think that it will cost more than a [inaudible 00:22:15]. I mean, the ingredients are not exotic. We have even flexibility in the ingredients, so we could kind of switch some of the ingredients up. I mean like Kareem said, “It’s like ginger, cornstarch.” And how do you make it in the context of a lozenge that they still remain effective.

Paul Jarley:                         So how much would they cost?

Michael Kinzel:                 I mean, when I make it in my home, it costs $2 and I make a hundred of them.

Paul Jarley:                         Cameron And Michael, what other thoughts do you have for these two?

Michael Pape:                   I mean, if you can make them, we’ve had plenty of people who is, Cameron said, “Take foodstuffs and make it.” And now, go to a farmers market, they’ll get customer feedback. But if you can make these ginger and cornstarch, I know it sounds like an Asian stir fry, but those are simple enough ingredients to utilize and begin to see what people would be interested in.

Michael Pape:                   The data that you have to generate, because it’s primarily would be a marketing play. You wouldn’t have to have this in a publication ready type data and all. That’d be more like a white paper, but it was done by real life scientists, but it wouldn’t be some sort of peer reviewed thing at all. It would be enough to be able to show this on a website. It’s a bit populous, it might be. You might recoil from that, but the fact of the matter is there’s different types of science for different types of products in order to get some traction.

Michael Kinzel:                 I mean, just a quick question there. If we were going after data, I mean, our data currently is like how far droplets traveling and what’s your exposure level at various distances, it’s very detailed data. And what I feel like you’re going after is more, either data associated with taste or is it data associated with transmission rate.

Michael Pape:                   No. That transmission rates would be too tough, but I think what you’re saying is about the projection. Let’s say of these… We talk about having maybe the money slide, the money slide is one where people see and they go, “Oh, I’ve got to have that.” If you had a money graph, which is you show plus and minus a couple of three ingredients, most people can read the graph that you showed the projectile is reduced significantly. That’s what you go into, particularly with healthcare professionals. And they might say, “Hey, I like this. We have family members coming in, we’re going to have them try it.”

Michael Kinzel:                 Can I show you our potentially money graph?

Michael Pape:                   Sure.

Michael Kinzel:                 Processed aerosols coming from a sneeze. This is a sneeze at the mask, and this is our ingredient or lozenge ingredients. And then this is a droplet projectiles. I would say that the lighter the color, the further in time it is. So this is a droplet that after like half a second.

Michael Pape:                   Yeah. There you go, Michael. This is the first page of the web of your website.

Paul Jarley:                         Yeah. I wonder how much the lodging guys are dismissing you because they’re not used to talking to engineers.

Michael Kinzel:                 Well, there’s not enough money in it, Paul.

Paul Jarley:                         Yeah. I know.

Michael Kinzel:                 There’s not enough money.

Paul Jarley:                         Markets-

Michael Kinzel:                 It’d be a low margin kind of thing and it’s just not worth, it’s not opportunity cost for them.

Paul Jarley:                         Yeah.

Cameron Ford:                  One thing you might want to look into is there’s a recent, I believe it was MIT in Oxford came up with a new way of classifying situations with regard to their risk of COVID transfer. And they looked at volume of speech as one of the variables. So they had being silent, a normal conversation or speaking loudly or singing along with all the other factors that we’re used to talking about.

Cameron Ford:                  I’m just wondering if using a lozenge, if you were in those kinds of higher volume settings might lower the risk because they used the kind of a green, yellow, red kind of stoplight kind of analogy to show which situations are safe and which were highly risky. You might be able to take a lot of yellow situations and make them green using a lozenge like this.

Michael Kinzel:                 Oh yeah, definitely. It basically makes your saliva in a way, like ketchup.

Cameron Ford:                  Nice.

Michael Kinzel:                 When you pour ketchup, it doesn’t-

Cameron Ford:                  I wouldn’t put that in the marketing [crosstalk 00:26:42].

Paul Jarley:                         I didn’t know if you’re selling it there. Yeah. I’m not sure you’re selling that.

Cameron Ford:                  Well, the things why they couldn’t get across that Mike and I really work hard with our students on. The methods that we advocate are really trying to get people to mitigate risks at every step in the process, by thinking about things that they don’t know yet and figuring out what’s the sort of least, the lowest commitment way in terms of resource expenditures, so we can utilize to figure that out.

Cameron Ford:                  So that’s why we’re talking about making small batches in your kitchen, taking those out and actually showing them to people, getting them to taste them and see if they can tolerate that. Show them this money slide and see if they get excited. There’s a lot of things you could do that would cost little to no money to learn a lot more about the potential attractiveness this might have for different consumers. And that’ll allow you to make more well-reasoned investment decisions, both in terms of time and money moving forward with this. So this is great stuff.

Paul Jarley:                         But it’s a very cheap solution, right guys? So it’s really about finding, in my mind, where the risk and the price point maybe kind of match.

Michael Pape:                   Yeah. It’s complimentary to current methodologies, the current approaches, the mask, the shield, the distancing. It’s just another one, it’s the three or four leaky buckets. None of those are perfect, but just smash them together, it can hold more water. Man, you guys, people, if they saw this kind of thing, you really would be all over the news, it’d be crazy because it’s simple to understand.

Michael Kinzel:                 Yeah.

Michael Pape:                   And the news agencies are looking for real life sciences to talk about stuff. You might be able to get some real traction. Even with this, I have to say.

Paul Jarley:                         You got to get Dr. Fauci to take one [crosstalk 00:28:36]. You got one influencer here, we got to get to him. He can’t throw a baseball.

Michael Kinzel:                 Yeah, we saw that.

Paul Jarley:                         We definitely said… So I’d interested to hear from Michael and Kareem, what do you think the learning lessons are for students here on your journey so far, what would you tell them?

Michael Kinzel:                 Never stopped thinking about what you’re doing and applying it to the real world. Sometimes you get wrapped under the axle on just details of flow. And I think it’s kind of cool to think of outside the box and apply what you learn. So Kareem and I both do aircraft almost exclusively, right? And what you learn in the context of an aircraft could be very applicable to almost any field.

Paul Jarley:                         Oh, handing them out on airplanes might be an interesting thing.

Michael Kinzel:                 Yeah. The airplanes would be a definite… Those are lists that we have kind of running airlines in our kind of like second approach.

Paul Jarley:                         Other thoughts for students? I’m sorry, gentlemen, I kind of cut you off. Cameron and Mike, any thoughts on that?

Cameron Ford:                  This a good example of the uncertainties that you face. There’s a lot of different possibilities, so taking a batch of these and visiting with various options you have here, would give you a lot of insight on who got excited and who would be most likely to use it. And you could lean into those enthusiastic people.

Paul Jarley:                         Mike [crosstalk 00:30:08] to follow up?

Michael Pape:                   Yeah. So many times I’m in the technical side of things. If you produce a patent in the academic setting, it’s a lot of times it’s a solution looking for a problem. And then it’s very difficult to think commercial, when you’re getting your PhD or you’re working on your manuscripts and all of that. But here’s one, because this has been so much in front of everybody’s space, which is intriguing, with the COVID. That you guys automatically took something from one field, fluid dynamics and applied it to our current problem.

Michael Pape:                   And the entire scientific community, people who never thought they’d be working in biology or in viruses have completely switched over, and are finding some way to attack this virus. And you guys did it simply because it was really right in front of your faces. And that’s a lesson is trying to expose yourself to what is going on in the world. And you’ll find these ways that will guide your research into a commercial vein perhaps. And that can be really powerful.

Paul Jarley:                         Kareem and Michael, how much more time are you willing to put into this project? What would make you stop, what would make you continue to go forward with it?

Michael Kinzel:                 If we can’t get money, it’s going to be really hard to really push out as a product. But I like the thinking that you’re saying on terms of just doing a little bit more research on, and looking a little bit more into some of the details to better potentially license. I think if we had more information and we get to continue to hit up licensing firms, that seems like, we’re still going to push that at least for the next year, if we’re able to get money in terms of…

Michael Kinzel:                 The other thing is, is do we get money from the government? That seems like an obvious one we’re going to push forward until we stopped getting money through this SBIR route. I don’t know how much I want to go into looking at foreign investors from other ends. I think if it fell right in front of me, I will do it. But I don’t know if I want to really push hard on that end and going to trade shows and these sorts of things. I mean, but we do have students and researchers that work with us that might be willing to do that. So I guess it’s not just us, it’s a whole team of people that are potentially pushing this.

Paul Jarley:                         Kareem, any other thoughts on that?

Kareem Ahmed:               I think, like you mentioned, that time commitment is always a challenge for this because it’s not our main core focus-

Paul Jarley:                         Yeah, it’s not your day job, right?

Kareem Ahmed:               Exactly. And I think that’s one of the things that is hindering us from moving this as quickly as we can primarily, because of that. So would we find a path where we completely take this and forget our day job, it’s a little bit challenging at least it takes off, right?

Paul Jarley:                         So Cameron and Mike, I’m going to put you on the spot here. Do they have a thing?

Cameron Ford:                  Well, I would encourage them to think more about the demand side and the customers you might go talk to, rather than the supply side, in terms of doing more research and kind of tweaking it in the lab. If you can drive to the airport, you can drive to a cruise ship port, there’s people you could talk very locally who would help you understand whether anybody’s excited about this. You might even be able to get a senior design student team involved in maybe going out and doing some of that legwork.

Cameron Ford:                  As I look at all these markets, I think it could be a thing. I think of probably a small to medium sized thing. It seems like this would be a very nichey kind of application, but I could definitely see there being some merit in some of these scenarios.

Paul Jarley:                         Mike.

Michael Pape:                   I don’t think it’s a thing yet. There needs to be product market-

Paul Jarley:                         It’s my podcast, so I get to go last. When I was at the university of Kentucky, I remember having a conversation with the Dean of engineering, where he claimed that all innovation occurred in the lab. I disagreed, and told him that innovation came from customer need. Mike Pape, said it best during this podcast. Frequently inventors have solutions looking for problems. One of the beauties of having engineers and scientists work with business folks is that they can help them find the right match. It’s why we’re so big on having business and engineering students work together in the college of business.

Paul Jarley:                         COVID is most definitely a problem. It has wreaked havoc with public health and the economy, but the COVID cough drop. Isn’t a solution for someone who has COVID, it’s a way to mitigate the spread of the virus to others, much like a mask. The key question is, whose problem does that solve? Maybe people who have loved ones, who are more likely to develop serious health problems than the virus, would purchase the cough drop to protect them, or companies that are trying to convince people that it’s safe to interact with their business might buy the cough drop in bulk and pass it out to people on airlines or cruise ships or at amusement parks or at sporting events.

Paul Jarley:                         But compliance with the cough drop taking would be tougher to monitor than wearing a mask. And the expense for mass gatherings could become pretty significant. Might the COVID cough drop find a niche market? Maybe, but I doubt it’s going to be the next big thing in defense against the virus. What do you think?

Paul Jarley:                         If you’re really geeky, and want to hear the extended conversation we had about the COVID cough drop, check out the show notes for this episode at business.ucf.edu/podcast. You can also find extended interviews with our guests, and notes from the show. Special thanks to my producer, Josh Miranda, and the whole team at the office of outreach and engagement here at the UCF College of Business. And thank you for listening until next time, charge on.

Listen to all episodes of “Is This Really a Thing?” at business.ucf.edu/podcast.

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