United States Marine Corps had the
most profound impact on his career
where he learned about leading in
precarious situations with imperfect
information.
In his career, he has worked as a
consultant for McKinsey & Co., as an
investment analyst at Ewing &
Partners, and at a startup medical
device company in the People’s
Republic of China. He also serves as
the Chief Investment Officer and
Director of the RBR Foundation, a
philanthropic foundation focused on
education and healthcare.
Driving the Commercialization of
High Technology Products
Local Motors is focused on low-
volume manufacturing of open source
motor vehicles designed using micro-
factories. Using co-creation and micro
manufacturing, it drives the
commercialization of high technology
products. “When you drive the
commercialization of technology
products, which we do for own
accounts and some other large
businesses that have similarly complex
high technology products, it is about
changing a hundred-year paradigm in
mass manufacturing. We are now using
the crowd. We are using a bespoke
community that we build with
suppliers and customers. Then we are
changing the way we think about
manufacturing. We have a mass
oriented way of thinking about product
commercialization,” asserts Rogers.
which not only carries passengers, but
also talks to them. To enable such level
of human interaction, Olli leverages
four Watson APIs — Speech to Text,
Entity Extraction, Natural Language
Classifier and Text to Speech.
Olli uses laser sensors that can detect
the distance of objects in order to get
around town, and also analyzes and
learns from the high volumes of
transportation data the sensors
produce. Olli has a maximum speed of
25 mph and can transport up to 12
people. Local Motors has incorporated
30 sensors in this self-driving bus to
collect the data, allowing it to make
quick decisions.
“Olli offers a smart, safe and
sustainable transportation solution that
is long overdue,” Rogers says. “Olli
with Watson acts as our entry into the
world of self-driving vehicles,
something we’ve been quietly working
on with our co-creative community for
the past year,” he adds on Olli.
Understanding the Wants and Needs
of Consumers
Being an open source company, Local
Motors brings thoughts, ideas and
solutions together on its online
community SaaS platform, Launch
Forth. The manufacturing company co-
creates its vehicles and products to
understand the wants and needs of
consumers of today and the future.
Local Motors collaborates with
prestigious companies such as IBM,
Siemens, GE and Airbus to redefine
not only the process but the outcome.
small company, especially in
comparison to OEM Manufacturers.
“We have to educate our critics on
what differentiates us from our
competitors and constantly push the
envelope and show that what Local
Motors is doing, is the future,” he adds.
Values that Drive the Innovation
Local Motors’ core values are co-
creation, open source technology and
Direct Digital Manufacturing with 3D
printing in Micro-factories. They
believe that everyone has valuable
ideas and thoughts, and they want to
not only make them heard, but also to
make them a reality.
For instance, an electrical engineer at a
large company is asked to only provide
feedback and information on electrical,
but they believe that this person may
also have a great idea for the way an
interior can be designed. Local Motors
believes in giving everyone the ability
to “have a seat at the table” and
bringing their ideas, thoughts and
experiences to light, which will only
help to create a better vehicle product
in the end.
“The future is unknown, but we are
trying to pave that path as we move
forward. We see 3D printing becoming
the standard in manufacturing, instead
of the exception,” concludes Rogers on
the future of 3D printing.
Making the World Ready For the
Future
Leading from the front, Rogers still
Amongst Local Motors’ greatest
achievements is Olli, a self-driving bus considers Local Motors as a fairly
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| August 2017 |