Innovators at FedEx Labs harnessing the future

The Commercial Appeal
January 25, 2008
By Jane Roberts

The first clue to the place's torque is the coffee: of three Starbuck's blends on tap at the front door, two are dark roasts.

It's telling, because what happens in the FedEx Labs on the third floor of a funky old warehouse at 516 Tennessee is nearly hallucinogenic.

In one corner, FedEx is tinkering with the possibility of three-dimension modeling -- perhaps one day offering customers at FedEx Kinko's inexpensive ways to model projects too big or costly to carry to a meeting.

In another area -- in a cluster of chairs rolled from somewhere else -- researchers are poring over ways to e-mail customers the minute the courier pulls into their neighborhood.

The result? FedEx doesn't have to redeliver, and the customer gets the package the minute it rolls off the truck.

"What we're trying to do is look three, five, 10 years out," said Zack Perry, 33, a FedEx "contextual researcher" who is so attuned to the futuristic that he's tapping into the market Facebook and other social sites offer for shipping.

"We look at where the market is going, how can we build on it and what the competitive advantage is," he said.

With the value of the dollar low, FedEx, for instance, sees great potential for small businesses as exporters. And with video camera prices coming down, it is experimenting with augmented reality -- or using cameras to visualize processes now done by hardware.

Besides the absence of time-wasters -- ringing phones and meetings -- the lab flows in a serpentine arrangement of sunlight and open work spaces, a metaphor itself for thinking outside the box.

Fresh flowers are delivered every week.

"You'll notice that all the furniture is on wheels," says Anita Watkins, administrative assistant. "If we need space for four or eight, we just roll extra chairs in."

FedEx innovators, mostly young creatives, are sent to the labs to spin out their ideas on projects that may take months or years to perfect.

"The ideas that come from the labs have great economic potential and realities for us," said Rob Carter, chief information officer at FedEx. "We manage the work down there like a portfolio; it includes everything from technology that is ready to go and we expect to introduce in the next year to processes we would like to use in the event of things that could be disruptive in the marketplace."

The team ranges from eight to more than 25, working on different projects in a back-and-forth that tends to suit both their eclectic personalities and the wheels on their chairs.

"Innovators would be a good way to describe us," said Mike West, 30, a senior systems engineer. "Because we're FedEx, we always thinking about what's coming next."

Since FedEx opened the creative retreat in the Emerge Memphis business incubator in 2006, it has turned out a rolling list of innovations, including a funky RFID concept, "close to going prototype," for monitoring temperature, light, location and humidity inside FedEx packages.

"Customers have told us this could change their whole business model," said West, who's pampered the collection of sensors through several permutations, including the current, a nearly indestructible plastic box that looks a little like a fish.

"We really don't have many rules here, but we do believe in speaking plainly and clearly," West said.

"When you're in any kind of niche, you speak the jargon," he said.

In an idea chamber, jargon tends to limit conversation because it's not universal.

"We try to be open to all ideas because our customers are in all kinds of businesses," West said. "And ideas come from everywhere; every person's opinion has value."

For that reason, there is always fresh fruit at the front door.

"We want people from the incubator businesses to come up," Perry said. "We get ideas from them.

"When you're in a startup, you're going 90 miles an hour because you want to get your product or service to market as fast as possible," he said. "Being in this environment helps us move faster."

-Jane Roberts: 529-2512

FedEx Labs

Vice president of innovation: Mark Hamm

Address: 516 Tennessee

Phone: 224-2003