Crowdsourcing car development

Tesla, is a Silicon Valley-based car company. They're currently developing a high performance electric-powered car. To achieve this, they have adopted many of the progressive techniques developed by their digitally obsessed neighbors.

If you go to their site, you'll see that their blog takes pride of place. The Tesla team use this to openly communicate their development process. For example, a recent blog entry appealed for help in understanding how far they can push the limits of their car charging technology.

This is an active form of crowdsourcing - in so much as Tesla are looking to their customer base to help develop and refine a product (a reactive form of crowdsourcing would ask for help in finding a solution to an existing problem)
This is a great use of crowdsouring - Car manufactures naturally create brand advocates. By bringing the audience into the ongoing development of the companies product they will create greater customer loyalty, build a word-of-mouth marketing model and genuinely produce a better, more user-friendly product.

In short, Tesla's approach to car manufacturing is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise guarded industry.

via Green Wombat

Technorati Tags: collaboration, crowdsourcing, WOM

Categories: Crowdsourcing, WOM.