When you think about automobile assembly, usually it's giant factories, robotic arms, and showers of sparks from welding machines that come to mind. But Carlo De Micheli describes his first experience at the OSVehicle project, when three of their Tabby prototype cars were put together by hand during the span of a lunch break.

Today OSVehicle is establishing relations with partners, designers, makers, and manufacturers in 70+ countries and on six continents to bring open source development to the automotive industry.

Henry Chesbrough describes open innovation as the change from the traditional and closed model that companies use to get a market fit, to a new model that proactively involves the crowd in expanding ideas and possibilities.

Defining a market shouldn't be a restriction anymore, but a way of understanding a specific need and delivering a product that satisfies it. The Internet allows us to work with people who face similar needs in other locations worldwide, and it is only in the last few years that we are beginning to use it to create tangible objects through distributed intelligence.

For more information about the Tabby and open source vehicles, check out our interview with the OSVehicle team.

Originally posted on the OSVehicle blog. Modified and reposted under a Creative Commons license.





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