Commonwealth in the networked economy [1]

September 27th, 2009

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the defining challenge of the twenty-first century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet. That common fate will require new forms of global cooperation, a fundamental point of blinding simplicity that many world leaders have yet to understand or embrace… In the twenty-first century our global society will flourish or perish according to our ability to find common ground across the world on a set of shared objectives and on the practical means to achieve them.

wrote Jeffrey Sachs in Commonwealth, Economics for a crowded planet. In The Collaboration Imperative, Vineet Nayar writes,

This is the Version 2.0 era. We have seen the rise of Web 2.0 technologies; companies are using Enterprise 2.0 tools; and in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the world’s leaders are trying to create Capitalism 2.0. As companies wade through these challenging times, I see a distinct shift towards another new paradigm: Collaboration 2.0.

There’s growing recognition everywhere of the need for corporations to collaborate with government, with customers, with NGOs, with stakeholders–and even with competition. In order to survive, business requires the cover of a collaborative ecosystem that will probably render obsolete traditional views of competition.

He goes on,

The recession has sent us a signal: Size does not matter. Big companies are often slow, lethargic, and arrogant. If innovation has to drive us out of this recession, the best brains must come together to create value. That will happen only if we start believing in the power of Collaboration 2.0.

Connected to this is the idea of open source, why on earth do we want to waste profligate amounts of resources, when perhaps co-creation, and collaboration provides a better, more sustainable economic model?

I picked up some stories on open source manufacturing. At Local Motors, they asks these questions:

What if we build the car of your dreams? It was green? We made it in your town? We listened? We did it?

The mission of LOCAL MOTORS is according to them to lead the next generation of automotive manufacturing, design, and technology in order to revolutionize the industry with game-changing efficient vehicles and an unprecedented standard of customer service.

This is how the process works.

# Vote for the designs you want. If you are a designer, you can upload your own. Either way, you help choose which designs are developed and built by the Local Motors community. Vote for competition designs, Checkup critiques, or portfolio designs.

# Open Development, sort of like open source. Once there is enough support for any single design, Local Motors will develop it openly. That means that you not only choose which designs you want to drive, you get to help develop them – every step of the way.

# Choose the Locale During the development process, help choose where the design should be made available. Local Motors is not a big car company, we are Local. The community chooses car designs with local regions in mind; where will this design fit best? You tell us. We make it happen.

# Build your Local Motors vehicle Then, once the design and engineering is fully developed you can go to the Local Motors Micro-Factory and build your own – with our help, of course

# Drive your Local Motors car, the one you helped design and build, home.

# Repeat as desired.

Engaged co-creation diagramme

Here is a video about one of the projects the Rally Fighter

On the Local Motors blog, we get a little insight into open source inspiration

I am proud to say that Nyko de Peyer, aka idesigncars, has been invited to join the Local Motors Team here in Wareham.

For those of you who often visit the Local Motors community this will come as no surprise. Nyko’s participation has been an inspiration to all of us.

Nyko has taken the initiative to nurture the community in his own time. Here are a few things he’s done, as a community member – not even a team member:

- Started an open Sketch Challenge to encourage progression of drawing technique within the LM community.

- Drove to Wareham, 5 hours both ways, to support Local Motors at the regular BCW (Burgers, Cars & Welding) event. He did this TWICE.

- Conceived the idea of Rally Fighter build to be broadcast through a live feed which would update every 60 seconds. In the end these recordings will create a step-by-step time lapse progression of the Rally Fighter Build Process.

- After conceiving the idea of the live feed, he brought his own recording equipment to the LM garage, and set it up.

- Since he will be traveling to Paris, Nyko offered to host the first-ever Paris Designer’s Night. He even arranged for drink specials.

From his activity you would think that Nyko has been working on the team for months! We are so fortunate that he is available and willing to join us.

Fascinating stuff.

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