The problem:

“The central problem was that roughly 80 percent of the websites that you visit with your smartphone show up as real tiny little things that you have to pinch and zoom. When you’re using a mobile phone, you’re trying to make a decision or take an action now. You’re not doing research for a week later. You’re trying to find out whether in a chain of eyeglass stores, which is closest to you. It really comes down to the fact that these supercomputers in our pocket are going to become the principal way that we access information,” said Christian Gurney, president and CEO of Mojaba’s parent company, Torsion Mobile Inc.

The innovation:

Recognizing the need for a “paradigm shift” in how information is provided on the Web, Gurney and Kirsner’s company, Torsion Mobile, created Mojaba, a tool for designers to create websites that look attractive and provide functionality for smartphone users. “You can’t just shrink down the standard website that we’ve been used to for 15 years and have it make sense,” Gurney said.

How they did it:

Mojaba is a tool set for creative professionals – advertising agencies, marketing professionals and Web designers – rather than end users, such as a business with a website.

Gurney said the reason it is provided to designers is that design agencies are having a difficult time converting a traditional website to one that is functional on a smartphone and also takes advantage of smartphone features, such as Global Positioning System applications.

Designers find themselves “coming back to customers with solutions that are very expensive because they have to be handmade by talented programmers,” Gurney said. “Programmers are a scarce resource, and talented ones are very expensive. Our tool changes the paradigm for them by giving them a tool set that the designer in their organization can use to put together very effective, very good-looking, well-branded mobile websites for their clients without knowing anything about programming.”

Torsion Mobile hand-coded a wide range of prototypes before it started building Mojaba.

“We looked at enabling technologies,” Gurney said. “We looked at what some competitors were doing. We looked at what was happening in India and overseas and made decisions based on that.”

In the short time that Mojaba has been on the market, Torsion Mobile has responded to customer suggestions. It is preparing to release an update and is looking to other products.

“Text messaging is a big deal,” Gurney said. “Unlike mobile websites, where we can service potentially up to 60 to 70 percent of the mobile subscriber base, with text messaging you get penetration close to 95 percent. People with a flip phone typically have a texting plan.

“It’s been complicated, it has a lot of intermediaries involved, it can be expensive, but if you have a firm that understands that and can explain it and break it down and also socialize the costs out across many customers, then I think that could be a good solution.”

Torsion Mobile provides some services for its clients, such as image optimization, behind the scenes. Otherwise, Torsion Mobile wants to provide the product, then get out of the way.

“The business goal is to be a resource when they need it,” Gurney said. “We don’t want to just be the guys with the tool, but be a resource for agencies when there are mobile marketing questions. Mojaba is the first solution; we plan to deliver additional solutions based on what the marketplace needs.”

What’s your key to being innovative?

“You have to understand the problem; you have to take a practical approach to developing stuff but also be open-minded.”

– Richard Kirsner, Torsion Mobile Inc.

“One of the keys is to be deeply knowledgeable about the domain where you’re trying to solve the problem. You can’t just say, ‘We are going to create mobile websites’ without knowing what the current state of the art is, what the competition is doing, what the trends are and having a real deep understanding of what it’s going to take.”

– Christian Gurney, Torsion Mobile Inc.