Now that you've had a chance to think more deeply about the Local Motors case, and respond to the three questions, I'd like to provide a few thoughts of my own. In particular, talk about four different ideas. First of all, how do students react to this case? Second, what are the concepts that we can apply to this case? Third, what are some recent developments to Local Motors and the Rally Fighter? Finally, perhaps most importantly, what are the lessons we can take away from this particular case? Well, I've taught this case many times. Typically, the student reaction is quite mixed. Most don't like the Rally Fighter at all. They don't see its appeal, they think it's too expensive, they think it's ugly. However, a few students, a small minority really love it, and think it's amazing car, and an amazing concept. So if you didn't like the Rally Fighter, you're not alone, most people don't. Second of all, concept application. In this case, is an excellent example of the concept of customer co-creation. As you see in this case, Local Motors appears to employ multiple co-creation techniques. For example, it used co-designing to obtain the basic Rally Fighter design by holding the design competition, as well as its various accessories, such as the light bar you can add on top of the vehicle. In addition, by Frida sharing all of his designs, components, and plans on his website, it encourages tinkering. So anyone in the world can download these plans, and build their own Rally Fighter, or take the basic fighter and adapt it. So for example, I don't particularly like the door handles, that could download the rest of the design, and add on my own door handles, I could tinker with the car. Finally, by requiring customers to actually come to the factory and engaged in the car building process, they spend six days building their car, Local Motors also appears to be engaging in a form of submitting. Although, in this case, the submissions come in the form of actual physical labor, which is somewhat unusual. But let's talk about some recent developments. Well, as of early January 2015, Local Motors has sold less than 100 Rally Fighter. Thus, from a pure sales perspective, this product has not been successful. However, the Rally Fighter was quite successful in terms of generating substantial awareness and attention for Jay Rogers and Local Motors, including several magazine articles, and television interviews, and numerous YouTube videos as well. In recent years, Local Motors has somewhat given up on the Rally Fighter concept as its sole source of revenue. So it has expanded product line, and it's developing co-created bicycles and motorcycles. More broadly, Local Motors has realized that their distinctive advantage is a worldwide community of designers. Local Motors at this point has thousands of designers who are submitting ideas to this platform. So now, it is positioning itself not just as a manufacturer of one vehicle, the Rally Fighter, but more as a co-creation design platform. As a result is drawn attention, and a sponsored idea competitions for a number of large firms and government agencies, including Reebok, Domino's Pizza, and the US Department of Defense. Finally, Local Motors is exploring new digital manufacturing techniques, and recently printed the world's first 3D printed car during a manufacturing expo held in Chicago. We'll talk more about 3D printing a bit later in this course. Finally, lessons learned. I think there are four key takeaways in this particular case. First of all, as you can see, although there weren't many automobiles sold, Local Motors has produced this car quite quickly, by using co-designed to shorten the development cycle, by about one-fifth of how long it normally takes to build a car. So they created the design and manufactured car in less than two years which is much faster than the typical automobile industry standard. So this shows us that traditional innovation practices are less than ideal. Because they restrict the flow of ideas from those outside the firm, and that's what Local Motors did. Open up this idea factory, and allowed thousands of submitters to give them ideas for the basic design as well the accessories of the Rally Fighter. Second of all, this picture case shows us that just about anything can be co-created. We talked a bit earlier about Threadless designing t-shirts. Well, these cars are much more intensive, much more expensive, much more larger scale, much more complicated than a t-shirt. So in my view, if you can co-create a car, you can co-create just about anything. Thirdly, this case shows us that your contributors may not be your customers. So as we saw in this case, the design for the Rally Fighter was submitted by a fellow named Song Hu Kim, who's unemployed college student, somebody who clearly couldn't afford to buy a $100,000 automobile, but provided tons of value by giving them this great design. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this case illustrates the concept that the value changes to be expanded. We typically think of marketing as customers being the sole value provider, in terms of their past purchasing behavior, or future purchase promise. This case shows that non-customers, folks who give us ideas can be equally valuable, and can give us value in ways other than just providing less money. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts about this case. I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for joining me.
