Co-created Military Vehicle

Posted by WisconsInnovation at 2:42 PM

The US Department of Defense is know for, among other things, being a poor steward of taxpayer dollars. Remember the $1,000 toilet seat? Wary of these types of cost over-runs, the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) decided to try something a bit different by asking individuals, rather than corporations, to design its newest combat vehicle. Teaming up with  Local Motors, DAPRA sponsored a design competition open to anyone in the world. With a prize offering of $7,500 (about 8 toilet seats), this competition received over 150 design submissions. The winning design, the FLYPMode by Victor Garcia went from concept to prototype in less than six months! This is yet another example, of how innovation by individuals can meet or exceed the innovation by firms.

 

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1 comments:

  1. Wendy said... August 22, 2011 at 10:59 AM

    I attended a CoCreation conference in Arizona that was held at Local Motors. It was pretty interesting to find an organization that began with a cocreation process in an industry that is not known for fast and nimble product creation. Jay Rogers, CEO, is quite visionary in this regard. They recently launched LocalForge.com as another type of cocreation environment for technical products. I will share the link to the video interviews once posted.  

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