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The Acerras on Creating Educational Play Tool: Lux Blox (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: Now on Bloomberg Radio, we take stock of small business.
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  Speaker 1: Small businesses want more streamlining and less red tag small
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  Speaker 1: businesses and they can even accept the no, but maybe
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  Speaker 1: kill them. There's so many people that have ideas and
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  Speaker 1: it has to be more than that. It has to
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  Speaker 1: be making it real. Bloomberg taking stock small Business in
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  Speaker 1: Focus on Bloomberg Radio. A children's toy that you don't
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  Speaker 1: have to log onto or plug into that blends creativity,
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  Speaker 1: spatial literacy, and architectural principles, completely made in America and
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  Speaker 1: developed by a husband and wife team over twenty five years.
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  Speaker 1: Does it sound good, well, then listen to this. We're
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  Speaker 1: welcoming now Mike and Heather a chair. They're the creators
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  Speaker 1: of lux Blocks. Welcome to you both. Good afternoon. So
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  Speaker 1: let's start with you, Mike, because I know you would
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  Speaker 1: come up a lot of with a lot of ideas
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  Speaker 1: when you're developing these blocks, and Heather would come home
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  Speaker 1: from work and say, Mike, it doesn't quite work. So
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  Speaker 1: is Lux Blocks? Well? How does it work? What makes
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  Speaker 1: it special? What makes it special is that when kids
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  Speaker 1: snap these things together, they have hinges in them so
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  Speaker 1: they move, so basically you can It's hard to talk
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  Speaker 1: about a visual thing on the radio. But when you
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  Speaker 1: sat together and make a sheet that moves like sheet
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  Speaker 1: metal would move, right, But the minute you fold it,
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  Speaker 1: it's corrugating like sheet metal would do, like on the
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  Speaker 1: wing of an airplane. So kids are deriving structure and
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  Speaker 1: rigidity to the same way an architecture and engineer would not,
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  Speaker 1: like a bricklayer. Right, you're not piling heavy objects on
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  Speaker 1: top each other's stick. You're you're getting lightweight strength through ideas.
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  Speaker 1: So the kids have we call it having access to
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  Speaker 1: nature's principles success exactly how cells and plants and animals
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  Speaker 1: are put together through corrugation. Now I understand that there
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  Speaker 1: are no printed instructions tell us about that. Yeah, well,
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  Speaker 1: you know, and that's that was always an issue with
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  Speaker 1: our company. We really wanted to be an open ended,
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  Speaker 1: you know, old school toy, and we've got a little
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  Speaker 1: bit of pushbacks because of that. So we have printed
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  Speaker 1: some instructions online and we have forty two videos online
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  Speaker 1: professionally done with kids showing how to build with the block. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: The point was we these aren't kids like other toys.
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  Speaker 1: They'll say this is the Star Wars staying or the
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  Speaker 1: Harry Potter thing. We really wanted kids to make things
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  Speaker 1: and tem apart and make more things because the block
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  Speaker 1: really doesntstruct you and guide you in a really creative,
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  Speaker 1: beautiful way. And that was the process we want to
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  Speaker 1: involve on kids play with the block. So Heather tell
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  Speaker 1: us about the patented hinge, because again I understand that
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  Speaker 1: you were developing this. You guys came up with the
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  Speaker 1: hinge and Mike initially wanted to have except you said no,
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  Speaker 1: no, no no, no, no no no, it has to be part
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  Speaker 1: of the blocks. What is it and what's so special
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  Speaker 1: about it? Well? Um, actually, if you saw what the
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  Speaker 1: prototype process was like, you'd find it most amusing. It
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  Speaker 1: actually took us, when we really sat down to make
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  Speaker 1: the block, uh, almost four years with the three D printer,
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  Speaker 1: trying lots of different designs before we actually wound up
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  Speaker 1: with the final design. Um. We actually had a German
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  Speaker 1: astrophysicist come by dropped by the house one day through
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  Speaker 1: some German friends, and and you know, he was a
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  Speaker 1: big proponent of of a separate hinge connector with six
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  Speaker 1: different points in this sort of thing. And what what
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  Speaker 1: the more you try to put into it, the more
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  Speaker 1: complicated it became and it had less of a textural appeal,
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  Speaker 1: and for me, it was very important that it be
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  Speaker 1: also intuitive. So I was the one who was insistent
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  Speaker 1: in the entire time that the connector be on the
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  Speaker 1: block itself, because I wanted that instant gratification that I've
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  Speaker 1: snapped two blocks together. And the hinge was not originally
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  Speaker 1: conceived in the process that it was something that developed
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  Speaker 1: later on the process, because we even had comb like
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  Speaker 1: connectors and that sort of thing. If you saw at
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  Speaker 1: our home the number of prototypes we did on our
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  Speaker 1: three D printer, you you'd really find it most amusing,
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  Speaker 1: because we have tubs and tubs of ideas that didn't
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  Speaker 1: quite make it. I'm wondering who came up with the
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  Speaker 1: atomic optimization principle? Oh, that'd be all right. Tell us
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  Speaker 1: what is the atomic optimization principle and how does it
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  Speaker 1: apply to lux blocks. Well, the idea was is that
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  Speaker 1: it goes back to the Greek that they thought that um,
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  Speaker 1: it's got there was an intelligent, you know, deity that
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  Speaker 1: made the universe, that that the god would have had
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  Speaker 1: a very simple building blocks that would have made everything right.
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  Speaker 1: It's a very old idea from democratis the Adam idea,
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  Speaker 1: And well that was when we wanted to make this block.
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  Speaker 1: We went down to first principles. We look looked at
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  Speaker 1: how nature put itself together. So there was a lot
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  Speaker 1: of thinking that wins this block. We look at the
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  Speaker 1: geometry of Buck, Mr. Fuller and Einstein and so the
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  Speaker 1: block Uh, the single square, but there's all only one piece.
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  Speaker 1: If you if you lose a piece, unlike Lego, you
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  Speaker 1: can still build what everyone because they're all the same piece.
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  Speaker 1: It's all the same square looking piece. But they generate
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  Speaker 1: rules when you start putting these things together. These little
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  Speaker 1: square blocks make spears, they make cells and molecules. They
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  Speaker 1: just build nature. And that's the atomic optimization principle that
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  Speaker 1: that basically, when you do have a real atomic element,
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  Speaker 1: you're going to build the universe. And that's what this
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  Speaker 1: block does. So Heather, Uh, you and your husband Mike
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  Speaker 1: are artists, inventors. You work for twenty five years on
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  Speaker 1: these lux blocks. That's lu X and then b l
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  Speaker 1: o X as entrepreneurs and small business people getting off
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  Speaker 1: the ground. You're a hundred stores. Now what has been
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  Speaker 1: your challenge? What have you learned? Oh, my goodness, Threshley
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  Speaker 1: and close to eight hundred stores were Recently, Barnes and
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  Speaker 1: Noble picked us up, so we're pretty excited about that. Actually,
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  Speaker 1: we hit their shelves on the eleventh. So I guess
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  Speaker 1: I think the most important thing is at some point
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  Speaker 1: you do have to say stop, that's good enough, you
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  Speaker 1: could keep refining. I think every artist or every inventor
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  Speaker 1: comes across that problem. You know you have to stop
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  Speaker 1: when you've you've solved the problem. At some point you
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  Speaker 1: know you just can't keep working. You'll never have a product.
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  Speaker 1: So that would be sort of a first lesson. And
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  Speaker 1: then the other ideas are, you know, find your audience
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  Speaker 1: and start with with a good audience and build from there. Um,
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  Speaker 1: those would be some lessons that I've learned. Thank you
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  Speaker 1: very much for joining us, both Mike and Heather A Chera.
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  Speaker 1: They are the creators of lux Blocks. That's o u
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  Speaker 1: X b l o X. You're listening to taking Stock.
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  Speaker 1: I'm pim Fox, my co host Kathleen Hayes, and this
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  Speaker 1: is Bloomberg