A generation ago, if an inventor wanted to profit from their invention they had to patent it. Not so today.
This was the message Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine in The Next Industrial Revolution Atoms are the New Bits brought to Calgary as part of Mount Royal University’s “legacy of ideas” speaker series.
Anderson talked of his grandfather. By day, he worked for a big company. A nameless cog in the industrial machine. By night he was in inventor in his basement. But the only means available to Anderson’s grandfather to take his inventions to market was to patent them, thereby losing all the value-added potential that might accrue to someone with the means by which to manufacture and market them.
Flash forward. Today, inventors have more options available to them. The factors of production are becoming democratized. And we are just starting to learn what that might mean.
An example. Local Motors. Local Motors is a new kind of car company. It all started with John B. Rogers. In 2004, Rogers was a marine stationed in the Persian Gulf. In his downtime, he started reading Winning the Oil Endgame by environmentalist Amory Lovins. (The book can be downloaded for free.) In the book, Lovins talks about how people can reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.
While the entrepreneurs running Tesla and Better Place are focused on running cars on alternative fuels, Rogers thought about things differently. For him an environmentally-focused car company was about producing vehicles locally, on demand in micro-factories. Buyers would really know how their car was made – in fact, they would participate.
In March 2008, Local Motors made its official debut. Designers submit sketch and plans for their dream cars. Others add their ideas. In no time, there were thousands of active contributors to the site, uploading drawings, commenting on each others’ work, and voting on designs. Open source design comes to the automotive industry.
Ninety-nine percent of the components in the car are “off the shelf”, so the next logical step is to build one. Rogers sells that two. He calls it buying the “ownership experience” and it begins at the Local Motors micro-factory in Phoenix, Arizona. Once there, they suit you up with a pair of coveralls and the master mechanic guides you through the process of building your car. Want to build with your son or daughter? No problem. All for the cool price of about $50,000. (Could this be the answer to my quest for a more environmental car as discussed in previous posts?!? Well, maybe not – see the video below of the Rally Fighter blasting around Baja)
An Internet and open source-enabled car company started with start-up capital of about US$4 million. I can’t wait to see what the entrepreneurs of the Next Industrial Revolution think of next.
