Is there a big idea for the auto-industry?
The Financial Times took a swipe at the auto industry last week. At least twice. When the business paper is so challenging of an industry with such a dominant role in the industrial economy, it’s a sign that in the post industrial economy, autos will not continue to dominate.
Is there a big idea that might save the auto-industry or is there a big idea that might change it?
Clearly the most significant feature of the auto-industry in the past decade is the inability of people there to make a big idea stick. Our experience of most companies we talk to is that people with big ideas generally cannot get champions. It is symptomatic of corporate life that we accept that champions are necessary – an alternative is to redesign the idea application environment so that good ideas stick more often. Companies with good open management policies indeed are doing that.
So meantime Tesla all electric supercar was built elsewhere, in fact backed by people from the IT industry who are familiar with disruptive thinking. And the TATA Nano is not a GM, Ford or Chrysler product and it costs not a lot more than a high end gaming computer does.
Even without a new big idea the auto industry will have to change, so much we know. But hasn’t this all been known for a long time? Yes, but people with big ideas have not been able to find champions….
What will replace the auto industry as an expression of consumer aspirations and identify? It may bs something like the personal energy identity that UK company AMEE is pursuing. Where does that leave autos?
Here is one view:
- Seek ways to make cars longer-life and up-datable in hardware and software
- Integrate more of the values that also attach to the home
- Adopt open source design
- Adopt open management techniques to co-define the future role of the auto
- Rescaling design and production around local fabrication, making it my car, made in my backyard
and here is the open source car:
[...] picture below is an example of new fabrication technology (one of the big ideas in auto) that represents one of these joining points in ideas and economic activity. It offers up an example [...]