Guru Speak > John B. Rogers, Jr, President, CEO and Co-Founder, Local Motors
Guru Speak Interview: Co-creative Innovation
Mr John B Rogers
John “Jay” Rogers is President, CEO and Co-Founder of
Local Motors, a next-generation car company that is changing the way cars are designed, built, and owned. Local Motors is the first automotive co-creation community, and the first company to produce an open source vehicle, the Rally Fighter. In 2011 Local Motors facilitated the co-creation of a military vehicle for DARPA called the XC2V “Flypmode”. Jay grew up a lover of cars and a student of the industry; his grandfather owned the legendary Indian Motorcycle Company. Jay’s family passion inspired an ambitious plan: Exciting, efficient, open source vehicles, built locally and sustainably with customer participation. Rogers went from Princeton University to the US Marine Corps, and then to Harvard Business School. He has been crafting Local Motors since his time in the Marine Corps. Local Motors’ story has been shared on PBS, Fox, CNBC, and Speed Channel and in Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Wired, Top Gear, AutoWeek, Inc., and others. Jay has spoken at BIF, PopTech, TedX Phoenix, Picnic in Amsterdam, Do Conference in Wales, among others. In this exclusive interview to Younomy, Jay shares his views on how co-creation can revolutionize the automobile industry, his vision for Local Motors ten years from now, and more. Excerpts: "We Want to be THE Co-creative Marketplace Dedicated to Vehicular Innovation"
Younomy: Assuming that co-creation is about democratizing the process of value creation, how close Local Motors is to making co-creation work in the automotive industry? John B Rogers: Local Motors is dedicated to the global community of automotive enthusiasts. Designers, engineers, fabricators, and enthusiasts are all welcome to join the community. It is free. We have built a platform to support all vehicular innovation projects and accommodates idea creation and refinement through word pictures, sketches, CAD modeling, design and development challenges, voting, rating, portfolio hosting. Local Motors also enhances the capability of each community member by providing opportunities for them to buy and sell tools, seek expert advice. Soon, we are launching a marketplace of specialty automotive products. We have built a company, a socially connected company, dedicated to the automotive products and ideas of our community members. I believe this is the ultimate in democratization of value creation. Younomy: Unlikely partnerships (producer and consumer, consumer and consumer, consumer and supplier and so on) is a hallmark of co-creative innovation. How Local Motors pursues new types of partnerships?
John B Rogers: I agree with your assessment that new types of partnerships are a distinctive feature of co-creation. I am not sure we should call them "unlikely" but perhaps in the context of recent automotive history, they are just that. In the future, these partnerships will be less unlikely and more commonplace.
We pursue any partnership on behalf of our community that will allow them better access and better capability to design, develop, and distribute. I think that this is one of the unique aspects of co-creation within automotive and why it works so well.
Let me explain further…Not all co-creation is created equal. On the surface, a t-shirt co-creator like Threadless is just like Local Motors; however, in detail their market works in an entirely different way. To be specific, automotive is very much a landscape of bigger suppliers, more regulation, greater product complexity, multifaceted tools, and many more disciplines coming together; therefore, our community of innovators requires a partner that is willing to do more "heavy lifting". They need a partner that will let them participate in many core areas of automotive product development, which so far has not been normally possible for individual innovators. To put it bluntly, innovating in the automotive space is a fundamentally daunting proposition for many creators. We do our best to reduce the barriers for them to participate in product development. Younomy: Owning a car that is designed by oneself can be a rewarding experience for customers. However, how does Local Motors model fare from the perspective of traditional and time tested performance measurement criteria around time, cost, and quality?
John B Rogers: To be clear, we do not offer the ability to design your own car from scratch and take it to market, yet. Maybe someday, but that seems a bridge too far in today's capability.
Instead, we offer open access to a design process on vehicular projects, and let the best come to market - it is more like a smart democracy, or an open team development process with guidance. We imagine a future automotive world defined by an economy of scope (versus "scale") where low capital costs allow high degrees of product mix. It also necessitates a limited volume and a discrete market for which it was intended. With that understanding, to answer your question, the products that come from our community are somewhat difficult to compare to traditional vehicles designed and developed in the old paradigm. However, in the case of the Rally Fighter, it was developed 5x's faster and with 100x's less capital than an average automotive development process.
Younomy: What do you think is the greatest impact of the success of Local Motors in the automotive industry or business landscape?
John B Rogers: We have proven that social product development in complex cyber-mechanical devices is a reality with great benefits in speed and reduction of costs to get to better ideas to market. Specifically in the industry, we are unlocking enormous potential in the creative class of designers, engineers, fabricators, and enthusiasts.
Younomy: Ford’s invention of assembly line has resulted in a mushrooming of new mass market car manufacturing units. Why don’t we yet to see a comparable following for your micro factory model of producing community-designed vehicles?
John B Rogers: :) Give it a little time. Ford's assembly line was not grown overnight. It took years to come to life and has given way to 100 years of refinement and "hardening". This hardening of mindsets is in fact one of the greatest barriers to change in this industry.
I believe it might have been easier for Ford to pioneer an assembly line than it is for us to pioneer micro-factories because he was competing against no embedded history of automotive production. In short, the desire is rampant for change and we see the call for it all over the world. It is happening already, and by the time it is broad enough to be realized it will already be a "fait accompli".
Younomy: Do you think social product development could become mainstream when there is a Facebook like development platform for companies to status update their product development and consumers to view, rate, submit their ideas?
John B Rogers: I do. Simply, yes. In a little more detail, as in the answer to question 2, the automotive industry has formed around a specific and rather complex version of PLM - one that makes sense for a large company and its network of suppliers and yet not one that is optimized for the millions of touch points we find in co-creation. We are working to provide a platform that is better suited to our form of co-creation.
Younomy: Where do you see Local Motors ten years from now?
John B Rogers: THE co-creative marketplace dedicated to vehicular innovation. A multi-million person, global community of creators and product developers who gain and give regular feedback on ideas. A resource for materials, tools and methods that allow individuals to bring their ideas to reality. This resource is centered on distributed micro-factories around the world. An on-line marketplace for specialty automotive where the most rich, advanced, and diverse set of automotive products are to be discovered, bought, and sold. |