One man with a passion for cars has spent a quarter-century of his life searching for a way to follow his dream. A graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Harvards MBA Business School, US Marine Corps Commander Jay Rogers always knew that he wanted to build cars. From China to Iraq, Rogers dabbled in many different industries and sectors until he founded Local Motors, a company that is truly passionate about co-creation. Rogers believes his company is allowing the innovators of today to create, truly, the stuff of dreams. With the age of the Internet and the advent of the era of 3D printing, Local Motors has been able to do something that has never been done before crowd source the design and production of its vehicles. Rogers stressed that it is the individual people and small companies that stand on the shoulders of giants that truly make this venture worthwhile. The people who have contributed to Local Motors cars simply:
Share an ambition to solve a common problem
It is the passion for learning and solving problems that drives this company forward. Inquisitive and ambitious people from all around the globe can go online, look up problems and attempt to solve them. There is an open community, and with creative commons licenses and an idea-sharing platform, Local Motors stands for the belief that a great community can build a great product. Rogers stressed throughout their presentation that this helped the vehicles hit the market faster, with less capital, and with more people. Through sharing data over the internet, Local Motors has the same mentality as do the Kelly brothers get to your fundamental audience, see what they want, and build for their needs. They have early access to customers and bring in regulators early to get ahead of their problems before they can start. They also use a concept called the golden hour.
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Personal Creativity Reflection
The golden hour is a concept that stresses investing in experts, passionate people, and finding people who are right for the job. Reaching out to the global community, very similarly to the Necessity of Strangers, Rogers explains that he is able to find solutions faster to his problems using people who are disaffiliated from the company rather than engineers that were stumped with the problem. In fact, Rogers said that someone actually solved a huge problem that he was having in the Rotunda of tables set up before the event. Every opportunity that you have to go to a new place is a chance to meet new people who can help you to solve your problems. Rogers has a wide variety of experiences, from serving in Iraq to working in a factory in China after college graduation. He uses his extensive network to expand his project and create the first 3D printed car, Strati. None of this would have been possible without co-collaboration with engineers, regulators, and designers from the around the world. Nor would the project have succeeded without crowd funding no venture capitalists means that Local Motors can answer directly to its customers, and end up creating a car that fits their needs. Rogers stated that they plan to mass manufacture customization with the Strati, meaning that they will produce many small batches of vehicles that have been specifically customized to fit a distinct group of users. This is feasible due to the nature of the manufacturing process of the car it only takes 44 hours to construct and many iterations are possible through slight modifications on a computer aided manufacturing or CAM program. Local Motors is always open for people to come and observe the manufacturing process as well. Rogers describes the micro factories as festivals of sorts everyone is always working on something, collaborating with others, and excited to be there. This imbues
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passion in the collaborators, which churns out ideas faster and faster. Its also open to anyone who has heard about the project, which means that brilliant minds from all over the world are able to contribute. Additionally, the materials are ecofriendly and much cheaper, so the cars will be much more affordable in the future when they go on sale to the public. This will generate more interest, and more crowd funding so that more resources can be devoted to both this project and future projects. Rogers hopes that there will soon be a local demonstration facility, and another micro factory located near the University of Maryland so that Local Motors can take advantage of many students minds, curiosity and passion in the James A. Clark School of Engineering. Rogers hopes to revolutionize the car industry to the same magnitude that Ford has, however he hopes to take the multitude of innovators of today and make them the heroes, rather than one innovator claiming fame for the work of an assembly line of, as Rogers says, luddites.