GLENDALE, Calif. (AP) – If it weren’t for someone willing to entertain a new idea, the new “Star Wars” droid, BB-8, wouldn’t be rolling into living rooms this holiday season.
The robot – which looks like a mechanical head on a spinning ball – was the brainchild of filmmakers behind “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens,” who were unaware their puppetry-animated character could function in real life.
But in July 2014, the CEO of Lucasfilm-parent Disney, Bob Iger, showed secret images of BB-8 to a startup company called Sphero. It was one of the inaugural class of companies Disney brought into a three-month program meant to nurture their entrepreneurial spirit and maybe generate a money-making product.
It was like Force lightning hitting pay dirt.
Sphero’s founders dummied up a functioning prototype that very night, an innovation that now sits in a special locked room in its headquarters in Boulder, Colorado.