A Nintendo DSi with a MyTego.com skin

The company provides custom-made vinyl ’skins’ (self-adhesive covers) for personal electronic devices.  Customers can create a Tego skin using images from the extensive online MyTEGO catalog, or they can upload pictures from their computer or digital camera. Each one is then manufactured individually to the specifications of the customer.

The MyTego skins are precision cut and cover the majority of the device. The device remains fully functional with specific cut-outs for screens, buttons, keys, as well as cutouts allowing access to the device’s battery. Tego skins can be easily and frequently replaced to remain up to date with fast changing trends.

MyTego.com says it has developed a complete patented production system that allows for individual manufacturing with infinite customer choices, with similar economies of traditional mass-production manufacturing where the customer receives very limited or no choices for personalization.

Among the devices for which MyTego skins are available is the Nintendo DSi, which went on sale in early April in United States as well as the United Kingdom.  MyTEGO.com picked up an example of the white version of the Nintendo DSi when it was first released in Japan a couple months ago. They released the online template for the DSi two months ago so customers could start designing the skin for the much talked about Nintendo DSi and order their custom skins in advance.

The MyTego.com website (in seven languages) provides skins for a large variety of cell phones, game systems, MP3 players, game consoles, laptops, PDAs and electronic organizers.

The guitar which had a once-off MyTego skin applied (Picture via Trans World News)

Recently, MyTEGO.ventured beyond its usual area of activity, when it designed and produced a once-off vinyl Tego skin with pictures for an acoustic guitar, to mark the release of a new CD by country music singer Johnny Reid.  However, it remains to be seen if the company will extend into this area of business.  Producing skins for guitars in particular may be difficult.  While major musical instrument brands such as Yamaha or Fender may produce guitars to an exact replicable template, many acoustic guitars in particular are generic, with no specific branding that can be used as a reference to identify their exact shape and thus produce a skin which will fit accurately.

First off, Objet Geometries launched the Alaris30 Desktop 3D Printer, which can create smooth surfaces, complex geometries, small moving elements, fine details, stand-out text and whatever else the design demands.

The Alaris30 is based on Objet’s Photopolymer Jetting Technology, and the company says that the strong model material and highly accurate printing enable thin walls and small moving parts.

The Alaris30 3D printer by Objet Technologies (picture via Manufacturers Monthly (Australia))

The Alaris30 operates as a network printer, allowing multiple designers in the office to send their files to be printed. The 300 x 200 x 150 mm (11.81 x 7.87 x 5.9in)  build tray enables large models or many small parts to be built simultaneously. As can be seen in the picture, the Alaris30 is (relatively speaking when compared with some 3D printers) small and lightweight enough to fit in any office, on a desk or with the stand Objet offers with the printer. It uses sealed 1kg cartridges of resins and the printed models are fully cured on the build tray.

In January, The Dimension 3D Printing Group, a business unit of Stratasys, Inc. launched the uPrint Personal 3D Printer (priced at $14,900 USD).

Like the Alaris30 described above, the uPrint is designed for the desktop,  requiring only a 25 x 26 in. footprin, and features an 8 x 6 x 6 in. build envelope.

The Dimension Printing uPrint

Stratasys developed the rapid prototyping process known as fused deposition modeling (FDM).  The process creates functional models and end-use parts directly from any 3D CAD program using ABS plastic, polycarbonate, PPSF, and blends. Using FDM, uPrint builds models with Stratasys ABSplus — a material on average 40 percent stronger than the company’s standard ABS material, making it ideally suited for testing the form, fit and function of models and prototypes.  uPrint also features a soluble support removal system, allowing for hands-free removal of the model support material.

uPrint is being targeted as an alternative to using external prototyping services - the company says it makes 3D printing “immediate and convenient through every design iteration, with no waiting in queue for a shared printer and no waiting for models to arrive from an outside service”.

In an article on the uPrint in MCADCafe, editor Jeffrey Rowe asked

“Does the announcement of the uPrint Personal 3D Printer finally usher in the era of 3D printing for everybody? At $15,000 it’s still a bit out of the price range of casual users, but might be the start of the 3D printing revolution that has been promised for a several years now by some vendors and industry pundits.”

He goes on to describe some of the other projects aimed at developing low-cost 3D printers, including RepRap, Fab@Home, and the somewhat troubled Desktop Factory (of which more later).  It is clear that 3D printer with a price of €15,000 will never be a consumer product, but it continues a general downward trend in hardware prices.  It is this trend, rather than the current generation of 3D printers themselves, which fuels the belief that commercially produced 3D printing hardware will eventually become accessible to consumers.

The RepRap and Fab@Home projects are, of course, already accessible to individuals in terms of cost, but the requirement that the customer assemble their 3D printer is likely to be an obstacle to their mass-market adoption.

Meanwhile, Desktop Factory has encountered difficulties with its technology and financing.  In March, Desktop Factory CEO Cathy Lewis issued a statement that the company was “forced to reduce our spending and focus on just the most vital activities to preserve our cash”.  This followed a period from October 2007, during which the company had to deal with major technical issues.  Assessments of this issue pointed to the need for a redesign of the company’s imaging sub-system.  Work on this continued during 2008, and the re-design was ready for customer acceptance testing in February 2009.

The Desktop Factory 3D printer

The statement went on to describe issues with  investor financing:

“From a macro view we have done well with $2M raised and another $1 million needed to finalize the round. However, we had not planned for the extreme deterioration of the financial markets and need to comply with an important ‘contingency’ from the venture capital firm. The contingency stipulates that no monies go into the round until all monies are available, which is the crux of the problem. We still need $1M and sufficient time to find the third investor in this difficult economy.

While we continue to aggressively work this issue we have judiciously delayed the customer beta. We need to make certain we have the right resources available to meet with our investors and that we are able to fully support our customers during a rigorous beta process.”

The Desktop Factory 3D printer, which has a list price of $4,995, uses an inexpensive halogen light source and drum printing technology to build robust parts layer by layer from composite plastic powder.  Notwithstanding its current difficulties, it appears to be lowest-priced commercially produced 3D printer to date.  The outcome of these current difficulties may have a bearing on the future direction of the 3D printing hardware sector as a whole.  If Desktop Factory does manage to get a 3D printer to market at the price indicated, it would be a significant step towards consumer accessible commercially produced 3D printing hardware.

The development of more affordable 3D printing hardware continues to gather pace, and the 3D printing concept is being expanded to materials beyond metal and plastics.

A perfect example of this latter trend is Mcor Technologies.  This Irish-based company, founded in 2004 by brothers Dr Conor MacCormack and Fintan MacCormack, has developed 3D printing technology called the Mcor Matrix, that uses ordinary paper as the raw material for the creation of three dimensional objects.  This company has received a wave of media attention in Ireland and elsewhere.  The Irish Independent newspaper reported in December how:

The Mcor Matrix prints physical 3D models from digital data using A4 paper, water based adhesive and a tungsten carbide blade. Models have the appearance of a wood-carving and are “tough, durable and eco-friendly”. The final models can be treated to give them a smooth, shiny finish and make them more durable. The Mcor Matrix is currently installed in several universities in Ireland and the UK, and the company has received sales enquiries from Dyson, Nintendo, IBM, Stanford and Cambridge.

The Mcor Matrix’ consumables consist of ordinary A4 paper, adhesive and blade.  It uses a special commercially available water based PVA adhesive, and the blade is made from cemented tungsten carbide.  In an attempt to reduce the capital cost of the machine, it was decided at the conceptual stage to use blade technology instead of lasers.

The Mcor Matrix 3D paper printer (image via Fabbaloo.com)

The Mcor Matrix has a patented adhesive dispensing system that deposits very small dots of adhesive onto the paper substrate.  It applies the adhesive selectively, depositing higher density on the part cross sections and lower on the waste. This enables easy weeding (separating off) of waste material.  It then uses the blade to cut out the part profile.

The finished parts have similar tactile characteristics to a wood carving - perhaps not surprising given that paper is derived from wood.  Media reports state that the price of a Mcor Matrix about USD25,000.  However, the running costs of the machine are extremely low, at €0.01 per cubic centimetre of production - said to one fortieth of other leading 3D printing solutions.

Spreadshirt allows customers to personalized goods to purchase for themselves, with a minimum order of one.   In addition, Spreadshirt extends this capability to partners, large and small, who want to offer personalized shirts and other apparel to their communities and customers.  Partners range from individuals with a blog, to the world’s largest brands.

Spreadshirt says that it will use the funding “to add new products and capabilities to its online platform, to strengthen its international footprint, and for innovative messaging to the massive market of people who wear clothes” - looks like they’ve given up on conquering the nudist market then…

Jana Eggers, CEO of Spreadshirt, is quoted as saying: “Spreadshirt mixes an online ‘Web 2.0’ platform with the offline worlds of fashion, mass customization, and real-time manufacturing.   Combining this with our global coverage means we require a financing partner with a range of experience to contribute more than simply cash.  Kennet, and specifically Managing Director Max Bleyleben, demonstrated their partnership mindset, and past results.  We were sold.”

In turn, the press release quotes Max Bleyleben as saying:  “Spreadshirt is an example of a capital-efficient business that has built not only a strong leadership position in Europe, but also quality leadership in North America.  The entrepreneurial team behind Spreadshirt — founder and Chairman Lukasz Gadowski, founder and CTO Matthias Spiess, and CEO Jana Eggers — have built a dynamic, innovative business for mass-customized eCommerce.”  Mr. Bleyleben was elected to join Spreadshirt’s board.

“As a post-bubble entrepreneur, it is great to see our idea come to this stage of growth financing,” said Lukasz Gadowski, Chairman of Spreadshirt.  “I am looking forward to working with the Spreadshirt team, Accel and Kennet to take personalization and self expression to new heights.”

Accel Partner Harry Nelis underlines the fit with Kennet, pointing out its experience with businesses that want to accelerate growth: “Since 2006, Accel has supported Spreadshirt’s development as it has become the market leader for creative apparel in Europe, and established itself in North America.  With Kennet joining the shareholder group, we have additional expertise to take Spreadshirt across the chasm into the mainstream on both sides of the Atlantic.”

It is something of an achievement in itself for Spreadshirt to successfully conclude a funding of this size in the current economic climate.  Spreadshirt’s main rivals, Cafepress and Zazzle (Both U.S.-based enterprises) have dominated this sector between them in the United States.  This new investment may assist Spreadshirt in making more significant inroads into the American market.

The MyPacifier Personalized Pacifier story started when a young mother in Denmark experienced the pacifier swap problem.  Pia Callesen, the creator of MyPacifier Personalized Pacifiers, says, “When I went to day care to pick up my son Frederik, more often than not I found that his pacifier had disappeared and Frederik had another child’s pacifier in his mouth.  I began searching for a pacifier product with a name on it, but I got the same answer in all the shops, ‘buy a permanent marker pen and write his name on the pacifier.’  I thought it should be possible for all parents to buy a quality pacifier with their child’s name engraved on it.  Apart from looking good, it could then also survive repeated sterilization.”

Pia Callesen went on to invent the world’s first personalized pacifier, something she thought was sorely needed for mothers everywhere.  Callesen spent months researching to find the right mix of a quality pacifier and the best-possible engraving equipment.”

The company trades in Denmark and Sweden under the name Navnesutten.dk, and in co-operation with Kim and Carol Pedersen of Fremont, California, the product is available to American parents at MyPacifier.com.

2.  Deborah Gage, writing in SFGate (the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle), describes how the paper invited readers to submit business ideas for assessment by venture capitalists.  One of the companies that made it through initial screening, to reach the venture capitalists’ evaluation, was Mojamix, a service that allows customers to mass customize breakfast cereals.  The service is somewhat similar to that of My Way Cereal, previously covered on this site.

A venture capitalist, David Pakman notes:

I’m skeptical that consumers at scale actually know enough about what ingredients go together to make a breakfast cereal or granola they will like and will taste good.  If I pick dried cranberries over raisins, will I like it less or more? Kinda have to taste it to know.

Mass customization of food products is indeed an interesting trend, but I wonder if it is better to focus on areas where the customer does not have to taste it to know if they will like it.

Margins in food products are low and are thus only interesting at scale, so Mojamix would need to demonstrate that the lifetime value of a customer is large enough to afford the customer acquisition costs that would be required to attract lots of customers.

The alternative is to make it a niche business with high margins and high prices, which are generally not interesting businesses for venture investors.

It is difficult to argue with this analysis:  there is a question mark over whether companies offering customised food products for delivery can achieve the scale required to move from being an artisan product to a mass customized one.  I do not know of any company relying on this business model that has achieved significant scale in terms of sales.  I’m open to correction on this.

2.  RPI, a provider of automated, mass-customized manufacturing and fulfillment for the consumer print-on-demand market, recently announced that it has set an industry record through the production of more than 1.3 million photo books in 2008.  This brings its overall production tally to three million photo books since the product’s launch, representing a 60 percent year-over-year growth.

3.  Tim O’Reilly, founder of the O’Reilly Publishing company that specialises in programming and other IT topics, gives an interview to The Inquirer, in which he notes:

“The deeper idea we’ve been exploring throughout all aspects of the company is the idea that a lot of times the most interesting technology can be discovered by what people do with it for fun.”

He gives a number of examples to support this idea, including the following:

“Open-source hardware is telling us something about the future of manufacturing – playing with mass customisation in various ways.”  This trend began with sites like Threadless, in which communities collaborate and vote on T-shirt designs; now there are all sorts of start-ups enabling people to design items for manufacturing.  “That’s open-source hardware.  People are realising there’s no real advantage in owning the design.  The cost may come down if more people use and manufacture the parts.”

4.  The AsiaOne website contains a reproduction of an article from Singapore newspaper The Business Times, in which Sivam Krish, CEO and founder of Genometri, describes the possibilities for user-generated content, and user-generated products.  He tells how:

“I was a former assistant professor in industrial design lecturer in the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore (NUS) for about three years.  During my classes, I found that the younger generation was able to create designs using a fundamentally different approach.I found them spending a lot of time in front of computers modifying computer-aided design models, and I felt that this could be automated.

……..

With the support of the university’s Industry Liaisons Office, I patented this technology that I felt could completely change the way products are designed.

Together with four friends, I set up a company called Genometri, to develop this core design technology and with a deep breath I took the leap from being an academic to an entrepreneur. NUS has a good support structure for funding. But as with all start-ups, there were its difficulties too.  Mine was in convincing designers to use the software I created.

After attending a conference in the US on mass customisation, I realised that the greater opportunity is in letting customers design and that most companies were trying to let their customers do this.

So we swung our B2B model to a B2C model, focusing on the consumer.  We launched a portal (www.jujups.com) as a design platform that would allow consumers to create personalised keepsakes, including mugs, t-shirts and 3D-printed photo frames, by using drag-and-drop functions.”

I hope to write a longer post on the current state of the 3D printing sector soon.

More links later!

Various aspects of user-centric business models have also been employed in the music sector. The use by Sellaband of crowdsourced band financing was previously covered here and elsewhere. Separately, the metal band Nine Inch Nails offers fans the facility to remix and upload their own versions of some tracks.

Now, two music industry companies at opposite ends of the size scale are using open innovation and crowdsourcing in new ways.

On 12 January last, EMI, the major music label, in association with BootB, “the online platform dedicated to challenge the marketing industry”, launched a worldwide competition to find innovative new ways to help consumers connect with music. The challenge, which is open to all creative sources (agencies, professionals, consultants, freelancers, innovative minds), is to find solutions for people who love good music but think it is currently hard to find.

BootB (Be out of the Box) is an online marketplace launched a year ago that allows anyone anywhere to respond to the creative briefs of major organizations and be paid professional fees for their ideas. BootB says that since it was launched, more than 10,000 people from 118 countries have joined the creative department of BootB to receive briefs and submit their ideas.

The press release announcing the project includes the following quote attributed to BootB’s Founder and CEO, Pier Ludovico Bancale: “As part of its new innovation strategy, EMI Music wants to leverage the power of BootB to solicit unconventional ideas from around the globe, and find a truly original, one-of-a kind innovation concept. This new extraordinary pitch confirms the relevance of our business model that is based on crowdsourcing of ideas. Original ideas will arrive from everywhere and the winner could come from anywhere.”

At the time of writing, the challenge is due to close in just under an hour. The page on the BootB site with details of the challenge shows that it has a budget of US$10,000 and 118 submissions. According to a comment from EMI, submissions could relate to an idea or a product solution, and not just a marketing idea.

At the other end of the scale, TechCrunch recently reported on Denmark-based startup Minimum Noise, which is planning to introduce crowdsourcing to music production, by “connecting musicians around the world in an open marketplace where like-minded artists can get together to create music tracks”.

According to the TechCrunch article:

..users can submit a project, describe what they’re looking for and what they’re prepared to pay for it. This can be anything from vocals to a bassline or the main instrumental riff, but the bottom line is that someone from the Minimum Noise community is supposed to run with the project and add a layer to whatever exists already. Typically, this would be something the project creator(s) or any of his musically gifted friends or family members are unable to accomplish without looking online for help. Project creators can accept submissions from other community members, pay him / her if they’re happy with the results and obtain the necessary material and rights of usage.

Comments to the TechCrunch article offered mixed views as to the prospects for Minimum Noise. Its prospects may be helped or hindered by how well it enables the process of co-operation between members.

These developments are reflective of a recognition, by both the large incumbents and small players in the music industry, that the closed models of the past are now history. The process of innovation can shift the ground under existing players in a very short space of time. How many of today’s major labels will still exist in ten year’s time? Will major labels exist at all by then? What business model will dominate in the future?

In the case of EMI, the BootB initiative signals, on some level, a willingness to change and innovate. In five years time, the majors may, by adapting to the changing nature of the sector, continue to dominate the world market for music. Alternatively, the market may shift completely to one where artists, serviced by innovative companies like Minimum Noise, sell directly to music consumers, with extensive use of a ‘freemium‘ business model, where some music is given away free to entice consumers to purchase premium music and related products.

___________________________________________

In FXStreet.com, John Mauldin wrote a column last November titled ‘The Financial Fire Trucks are Gathering‘. While the first two sections of the column refer to other topics, the third, titled ‘The Millennium Wave’ is an insightful analysis of ‘The Third Wave’ Alvin Toffler’s book from the 1970’s, which predicted a world wide computer network (which came to reality as the internet) and mass customization. Toffler depicted the First Wave as the agricultural revolution, the Second Wave as the industrial revolution, and the Third Wave as the electronic data and communication revolution. ‘The Millennium Wave’ also looks at the nature of change. John Mauldin writes:

“Although some suggest that we’re still in the middle of Toffler’s Third Wave, I would suggest that what we are facing is different in both substance and character.

The Third Wave was actually the result of an innovation cycle that we can call the Information Age. I believe we are only halfway through the Information Age, with more profound changes as to how we work and play just around the corner.

But this time something is different. Instead of one wave of innovation following another, I believe that we are going to see multiple waves of significant change and innovation surge all over the world at roughly the same time. The combined effects are going to produce a period of change unlike anything seen in the history of man.

It will change things in ways that almost defy the imagination and at a pace that will leave one breathless. On the one hand, the Millennium Wave will be seen as a source of good, as we will live healthier and longer and there will be more of the basic necessities of life and more life options. On the other hand, the very ground we walk on will seem like it is shifting. The roadmap we have in our minds for our future will require a constant fine tuning (if not major reprogramming) in order to determine our position.

The more precisely you plan your future, the harder that change will hit you.”

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Austin Weber, writing in Assemblyblog.com, (part of the online version of Assembly Magazine) describes the need for the U.S. auto industry to switch to a build-to-order strategy. He notes that Matthias Holweg and Frits Pil, professors affiliated with the International Motor Vehicle Program, a research consortium based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge, MA), believe the auto industry desperately needs a flexible production system that addresses complexity issues by focusing on strategies such as “decoupled assembly” and body shop modularity.

The article also describes:

…another interesting concept that could revolutionize the age-old way in which cars are manufactured and distributed…a system in which local car dealers would engage in final assembly.

Here’s how it would work: A basic car, consisting of an engine, chassis and body, would be delivered to a dealer. Then, a team of individuals would set about customizing the vehicle for each buyer’s individual tastes. In other words, final assembly would be done at the point of sale. It would be interesting to see an automaker that’s bold enough to try that kind of innovative strategy.”

The proposal described in the Assemblyblog article sounds a lot like that proposed by Local Motors, featured in a recent post on this website.

In some cases, the crowdsourcing model used involved a reward of some kind for contributors, on other occasions there is not. I’ve previously expressed my own opinions on this, so won’t repeat them here. Other writers have recently looked at this variation in approaches to crowdsourcing. Firstly, Scott Klososky in Technology Story has described a classification for the different types of crowdsourcing:

Voluntary vs. Involuntary - Wikipedia asks for voluntary contributions to its online encyclopedia. By contrast, Google’s image indexing game is an involuntary crowdsourcing scheme to index images by leveraging the brain power of the people playing the game.

Social vs. Commercial - Yahoo Answers is an example of a social crowdsourcing operation where the community of users is crowdsourced to provide the underlying product - which is advice.  On the commercial side of this same model is Name This, which pays contributors to offer advice to companies trying to develop brand and company names.

Rewarded vs. Unrewarded - Innocentive is a site that allows companies to post problems that they need solved with a specific bounty that can be earned if someone has a solution. By contrast Dell’s Ideastorm, and Starbucks mystarbucksidea, provide a place for customers to give product advice with no reward other than maybe getting these large organizations to improve their products. Or, as Scott Klososky says “In other words, free market resource leveraging the herd.”

The potential for business to exploit a pool of free labour through crowdsourcing initiatives may not be the bonanza envisaged. Writing in CRM Buyer, Erika Morphy notes that:

“The crowd is beginning to look like an incredibly large, wise, cheap labor pool. Fortunately, it’s also unwieldy, which may be the crowd’s saving grace”.

The article describes a number of examples in the crowdsourcing sphere. LiveOps uses a form of crowdsourcing, which it calls “crowdsourcing BPO” - to schedule the 20,000 home agents that support its call centre operations. Essentially, it sources complex calls to agents that have the expertise to handle the topic. An interesting comment is made by Eckart Walther, SVP of marketplace at LiveOps:

“Almost all crowdsourcing plays I have seen so far use an oversupply of people,” he noted. “That doesn’t work in the real world because it is not practical.” For starters, he said, a company cannot pay all those people — and expecting consistently high-quality work from volunteers is not realistic.

Should crowdsourcing initiatives limit the potential population of contributors to those most likely to make valuable contributions? It depends on the nature of the initiative. Innocentive, an online community where companies can post problems they need solved, is theoretically open to anyone to contribute. However, the complex nature of the problems posted will, in themselves, filter the quality of responses to some degree.

By contrast, a crowdsourcing initiative for technical support may attract contributors whose confidence in offering solutions is not matched by their abilities. The possibility of incorrect solutions being offered is relatively high in such cases. Perhaps in this circumstance, some process for filtering of applicant contributors is appropriate to ensure the integrity of the initiative.

The dream of ‘free labour’ (or ‘free labor’ in U.S. English) envisaged by some businesses may turn out to be a double-edged sword, as a business wishing to leverage the contributions of the masses may have to minimise the difficulty of the challenge, which may have the undesired and paradoxical consequence of lowering the quality of contributions.

A third category of crowdsourcing is where ’solutions’ are not offered in response to a technical challenge, but to an invitation to contribute visual design or other non-technical contribution. Obvious examples include the crowdsourced clothing enterprise Threadless.com. In this case, there is no need to raise barriers to entry, as the community will collectively vote on the contributors effort, based on their tastes rather than any specific knowledge base.

In all of the above scenarios, the idea of paying all contributors is clearly nonsensical. It is the successful contributors whose efforts should be rewarded. To achieve the objective of leveraging the knowledge of the masses, business must realise that to get the best answers, it is necessary to attract those who can give them, and these are the people who also best know the value of the knowledge they hold.

An article in the Vancouver Sun, ‘One-size-fits-all no more‘ provides an interesting overview on the topic of personalized medicine, explaining the topic everyday language, and decoding some of the terminology used in this area.

Scott Duke Harris, writing in the Mercury News, includes personalized medicine as a ‘Tech trend to watch in 2009‘ and summarises some of the examples that have made the most progress towards widespread usage.

In addition to technological developments, the increasing affordability of current personalized medicine technologies such as genomic sequencing will advance their use in the healthcare market, which John Carroll describes in the Fierce Biotech blog.

Personalized medicine is frequently concerned with diagnosis - analyzing whether a particular existing treatment is compatible with an individual patient’s genetic makeup. The New York Times looked in detail at this area in a recent article titled ‘Patient’s DNA may be a Signal to Tailor Medication‘, focusing in particular on changes to the U.S. legislative environment to reflect advances in science. It also raises the question as to whether major drug companies will be enthusiastic about personalized medicine technologies that may reduce the sales of existing drugs, by identifying patients for whom they are likely to be ineffective.

It should be borne in mind that the current trends in personalized medicine are mostly concerned with the development of more effective diagnostic techniques, something which is evidenced by all the articles referenced here. It is likely to be many more years before personalized treatments, that combat diseases with unique solutions based on individual patient genetics, become a reality.

The DK travel customized travel guide website

They are similar in concept to Offbeat Guides, which were covered on this site recently.

The Inventorspot article considers the DK Travel customized travel guide to be a superior offering to the Offbeat Guide, although it should be pointed out that the Offbeat Guide is still in a ‘beta’ stage, to allow it to be evaluated by customers before launch, a method more commonly used with computer software.

The first of these blogs is called Complex Selling Made Effective, with articles written by contributors from Cincom, principally Louis Columbus and Dale Wolf of Cincom Manufacturing Business Solutions. While some companies use blogs as little more than a press release service, Complex Selling Made Effective is populated with genuinely interesting posts. While this blog is in existence since June 2008, I only became aware of it recently and am catching up on the posts to date.

The second, Product Configurator Blog, is a product blog for Cincom Acquire sales and product configurator, which highlights and discusses the technology options and features to speed up sales in a complex manufacturing setting. This blog is more commercial in nature and the content is somewhat comparable to ‘White Papers’ - documents written by IT companies to that analyse a particular business challenge in a quasi-academic fashion, but are ultimately aimed at selling the company’s products.

Following a number of consolidations over recent years, Cincom is one of a smaller group of independent software suppliers specialising in products for complex selling. The contributors to Complex Selling Made Effective have an opportunity to become ‘technology evangelists’ for their company, emulating the likes of blogger Robert Scoble, who was the public face of Microsoft to many in the technology community during his spell working for that company.

Company head Jay Rogers and his staff of nine have built a system that:

“so far is 50 percent Web 2.0 social community and 50 percent rapid-prototyping workshop. The first half of Rogers’ big idea is tospeed up the design process—and, in theory at least, tap directly into consumers’ own ideas about what they want from their next car—by staging online design competitions. Hobbyists and professionals alike are invited to join Local Motors’ online studio and submit their 2-D sketches and renderings for periodic contests focused on cars for different geographic areas. Community members vote on the designs, and the winners get not only cash prizes ($2,000 for first place, $550 for second, $300 for third) but a shot at having their design turned into a production vehicle. The company pays the final selectees $10,000 for the right to the production-bound designs.”

The company will then take the selected designs into full-scale, 3-D engineering plans, designed to use as many off-the-shelf parts as possible.

Many of the recent rounds of the design competition have asked participants for designs that are inspired by various locations within the U.S., for example the tagline for the current ‘Chicago’ competition is “Driven by Humanism, Gangster by Design”.

Local Motors Chicago competition poster

Local Motors wants to build a network of 50 small assembly plants around the United States, where engineers would essentially hand-craft vehicles, with help from the buyers themselves, at least in the beginning. The company will limit production to runs of between 1,000 and 2,000 cars per year per factory, miniscule figures by comparison with the mainstream auto industry. However, the company’s target market is not regular car buyers but rather those from the auto enthusiast sector, who may well be involved in motorsport or kit-car building.

In the XConomy article, Jay Rogers focuses on the ‘green’ credentials of the Local Motors concept, referring to the goal of making the cars lighter than mainstream equivalents, therefore improving fuel economy. From his experience of the Iraq war, he is also interested in reducing the U.S. dependency on imported oil.

Separately, he makes an interesting comment on the inability of large manufacturers to respond to changing consumer preferences:

“I looked at the supply chain and I saw that there are people who make great engines, great batteries, great lightweight materials—but the people who make cars can’t use them, because they’ve gotten stuck in their enormous apparatus.”

He notes that this will delay the large U.S. automakers in particular from responding to the fall in demand for SUV’s and other larger vehicles. I made similar observations in a post titled ‘Car Trouble‘ two years ago. This difficulty in responding to changing customer demand had been foreseen by many commentators in the automotive media. There is also a certain amount of overlap between some of the ideas in my Car Trouble - Part 2 post, and Local Motors strategy of using ‘off-the-shelf’ components wherever possible.

Local Motors is admirable for offering winning contributors to their crowdsourcing project rewards in cold, hard cash, compared with the ‘free labour‘ view held by some.

As the XConomy article notes, the history of the auto sector is littered with stories of companies that started promisingly but fizzled out after a few years.  However, many of those companies were trying to emulate the mainstream manufacturers in the way they organised themselves.  Because Local Motors is starting from a ‘blank page’ in terms of so many aspects, from design to supply chain, it may at least have a better chance of success than many of those other small manufacturers that came (and went) before.

Members will discuss, debate and collaborate on all aspects of the vehicle’s design through the Splitwheel.com website.  Key design decisions will be decided by a regular vote, covering everything from the chassis layout and engine choice to hundreds of more detailed decisions on the suspension, interior, body and all other aspects of the car. The project managers will provide users with in‐depth analysis on the key issues around the car.

The website will use a combination of forum discussion, a Wikipedia-style user-edited knowledge base and a comprehensive voting system to turn user input into a workable vehicle design.  Along with acting as a liaison with Caterham’s engineering team, Project Splitwheel will also provide guidance and input from other automotive suppliers and experts as required.

Caterham will work with Splitwheel members on translating our specification and designs into a real world prototype vehicle over the next 2-3 years. Providing that Project Splitwheel provides a realistic specification and business case for the car, Caterham will commence build of the prototype in 2010.

While some petrolheads may be dreaming of designing a rival to the Bugatti Veyron, the design to come out of this process must also be a viable, saleable product for the real world that Caterham can realise.  The most important factor is that the car must be enjoyable for an enthusiast to own and drive in its own right.

While the objective of the project is to put the completed design into full production, this will inevitably depend on many factors, including production and material costs, economic conditions and market demand.

The project is open to ordinary car enthusiasts, and not just trained engineers.  The Splitwheel website states that:

Whilst expert technical input will be welcomed and sometimes necessary, first and foremost we want to recruit ‘ordinary’ car enthusiasts. Anybody with a passion for cars is welcomed. Any technically complex issues will always be broken down and explained in plain English.

The Splitwheel.com website currently has explanations of the project and other related information, but the crowdsourcing element is not yet active. It is expected that the full site will be launched before the end of 2008 , with the project starting in earnest in the New Year.

Members who contribute a worthwhile idea or suggestion to the Project will have their efforts “recognised by the team”, although it is not yet specified what form this recognition will take.

For those who are unfamiliar with Caterham, it is a British sports car manufacturer that originally bought the rights to the Lotus Seven when the Lotus company discontinued that particular model. Caterham continued to develop the car, with a wide variety of engines used over the years. However, today’s Caterhams retain the distinctive ‘cigar-shaped’ bodywork of their Lotus forebear. The company’s products are generally highly rated by the motoring press. The Caterham is designed to be a lightweight, well-handling car, rather than a massively powerful one. Its agility and lack of weight means that it is often quicker on a track than many more powerful cars.

I recall a television documentary during the 1990’s which followed Caterham’s efforts to move away from the ‘cigar shape’ to a more modern design. The result of that process was the Caterham 21, which was not a commercial success. The 21 was expensive, but what really killed it off was the re-appearance of other lightweight sportscars such as the Lotus Elise, with which it could not compete.

In view of its past experiences, Caterham will probably be hoping that the Splitwheel project produces a design that is in line with the spirit of the existing Seven.