<p>Jim Wyatt, Wow! Stuff, Director (Product Acquisition and Brand Innovation)</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Jim accidentally fell into the toy industry as a postgraduate student in cybernetics (focusing on robotics and AI in distributed mixed reality environments) when he took on a side project to develop a kids&rsquo; version of his university research robots...</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>...After a gruelling 8 years living in Shenzhen, completing his Ph.D (that ended up being in how kids interact with &ldquo;smart&rdquo; toys and robots) and setting up his own toy inventor group with 2 of his university colleagues, it was time for a change.&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Through a series of chance encounters in 2009 with exceptionally talented film makers, artists, toy inventors and technologists (and a desert camping trip), Jim moved his business to Los Angeles. In 2010 he ran into the Wow! Stuff team at the Nuremberg Toy Fair. By the end of the week he had sold them on several inventions and by the end of 2013, had sold them the company!</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Operating out of the Jim Henson Studios lot Jim and his team continued to drive innovative product development from within Wow! Stuff. As the company grew and the product lines and licenses expanded, it was clear Wow! needed to bring in even more concepts of exceptional caliber and disruptive potential.&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>As an inventor, Jim was the prime candidate to grow a new initiative to reach out to the wider inventor community. In its first year, one that started at ChiTAG 2019, this initiative has proven to have been successful beyond our wildest dreams and has given us the opportunity to work with the sharpest and most creative minds in the industry.&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Let&rsquo;s see what Year 2 holds...</p>