Christian Villum: Giants such as Google and IBM have lately been followed by Canadian D-Wave, the leading developer of quantum computers, which opened up parts of their platform in January. But it’s not just the large, financially strong American technology companies who are painting the picture of open source as a global megatrend. Start-ups and small to medium-sized companies all over the world, and not just within the tech industry, are creating new and exciting open source-based physical products. 3D Robotics, Arduino and the British furniture company Open Desk, which is creating open design furniture in collaboration with 600 furniture creators all over the world, are just a few examples of how open source has become the foundation of some of the most innovative and interesting business models of our time.

Danish Design Centre has dived into this trend for the past year; a trend which is part of a large wave of technological disruption and digitization and which is currently top of mind for many companies. How do you get started with digitizing your business model, and how do you know if open source manufacturing is the future of your company? These questions aren’t easy to answer.

Growth programme for curious Danish production companies

This is why we, in collaboration with a range of partners, have initiated REMODEL, which is a growth programme for Danish manufacturing companies who wish to explore and develop new business models based on open-source principles, and which are tailor-made to fit their industry and their specific situation. REMODEL demystifies a complex concept and helps the company develop economically sustainable business models which can open op new markets and new economies.

We do this by using strategic design tools, which make up the foundation of the programme, and which are based on strong design virtues such as iterative experimentation, the development of rapid prototypes and most importantly, focusing on the needs of the end-user. On top of this, REMODEL also involves a global panel of experts, CEOs and researchers within the field of open source, which allows the programme to pull on expertise from some of the world’s most visionary innovators.

Timeline for the programme

REMODEL consists of a series of design-driven stages. Last year the programme was launched in a testing phase in which the Danish Design Centre collaborated with a handful of Danish manufacturing companies, including renowned hifi-manufacturing company Bang & Olufsen, who went through early modules of the programme over the course of the spring 2017. These modules were reiterated along the way based on the feedback from those tests.

The key learnings from these test as well as workshops with members of the expert panel then became the foundation for the official REMODEL programme, which launched on February 5, 2018, and where 10 pioneering companies are currently working their way through the programme, which has been set up as an 8 week design sprint. The outcome is for them to have gained a thorough strategic understand of the concept of open source hardware as it relates to their industry and furthermore a draft strategy to open one of the existing products in their portfolio.

Radical sharing of knowledge

Learnings, tools and methods from both the test runs and the main programme will be collected and shared in a REMODEL open source hardware business model toolkit, which will be freely available after the program.

On top of this we will be organising a REMODEL knowledge sharing summit in October 2018, where participating companies, the international expert panel, prominent speakers and anyone else who are interested are invited to Denmark to share their experiences and think about the next steps for open sourced-based business models and strategies for manufacture companies.

Discussing REMODEL internationally

In March 2018, Danish Design Centre is yet again participating in the world’s largest technology event, SXSW Interactive, in Austin, Texas. We have been invited to host a panel debate as part of the official schedule under the title ‘Open Source Innovation: The Internet on Your Team‘, where speakers from Bang & Olufsen, Thürmer Tools and Wikifactory will discuss the topic in general as well as tell stories from the REMODEL program.

Learn more

Curious to follow the REMODEL program in more depth? Read more here or sign up for the newsletter. Eager to discuss? Join the conversation on Twitter under the #remodelDK hashtag or contact Danish Design Centre Programme Director Christian Villum on [email protected]

Originally published in danskdesigncenter.dk

Lead image: Open Desk builds furniture as open design. (c) Rory Gardiner

Text image: CC-BY-NC Agnete Schlichtkrull

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John Robb, writing for HomeFree America, examines the dangers of state-enfoced monopolies.

There’s a growing majority of business owners in the US who would rather cheat that compete (despite what you might be thinking, it wasn’t always this way in the US).

Business owners willing to bribe a politician in order to protect their company from competition.

Most recently, we’ve seen Michigan, Texas, New Jersey, Maryland, New Mexico, and Iowa block Tesla Motors, the electric car company, from selling directly to customers in the state.

In New Jersey’s case, the Republican governor, Chris Christie, claimed he was taking this action in order to protect consumers from the perils of direct sales.  The result was legislation that dictated that all cars must be sold through dealer networks.

“This administration does not find it appropriate to unilaterally change the way cars are sold in New Jersey without legislation…” New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie’s spokesman.

It was obvious why New Jersey did this.

Tesla is building a revolutionary product.

It’s not revolutionary because it is a well designed and reliable car (it’s has topped the ratings on Consumer Reports in the past).

Its revolutionary because it greatly improves the economics of driving. First off, it’s a fully electric car, not a hybrid car that uses gasoline and electricity.

This means it costs less to drive, a lot less. Based on current gasoline and electricity prices, it costs 90 percent less to run an electric car than it does a gasoline car. That’s an important savings for every American household.

It turns refueling from $70 weekly (or biweekly) visit to the local gas station into a $7 event. It’s a savings that could easily provide tens of thousands of dollars in savings to the owner over the life of the car (a friend of mine who owns a Tesla, saved $6,000 in fuel costs in the first year of ownership).

However, that savings is not the improvement that got it into trouble in New Jersey. Tesla is also trying to improve the economics of maintaining cars by changing how we buy them.

Here’s how the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, explains it:

“I have made it a principle within Tesla that we should never attempt to make servicing a profit center. It does not seem right to me that companies try to make a profit off customers when their product breaks.” Elon Musk, the Chairman and CEO of Tesla, in a letter to New Jersey.

From this statement alone, it’s easy to see the influence of the American Way on the decision making going on at Tesla.

Musk is driving his company forward based on the force of moral conviction and a belief in a vision of a better future for all Americans.

To make this future a reality, Tesla sells its cars directly to the customer to cut out the costs of the dealer network. The company can do this because since it doesn’t need a dealer repair network to keep its cars running. Electric cars don’t have spark plugs, belts, oil filters, and air filters that need constant replacement.

Tesla can diagnose many problems remotely and can often fix them by using updates, patches, and improvements sent over the air automatically to the car.

This is what set off alarm bells in New Jersey. Tesla’s approach to selling cars is clearly the future of the automobile industry and the car dealers know it.

So what happened?  Rather than innovating on ways to build a better future for themselves and their customers, these dealers opted to use clever legal reasoning to rig the game in their favor.

In this case, they campaigned for legal protection from the government based on an outdated state law. The type of protection that makes it possible for them to a profit at the expense of almost every other American.

This corruption isn’t isolated.

Just a few years ago, the financial industry became so corrupt, it led to a global financial disaster. This wasn’t any ordinary market crash. It was a financial disaster so big that it impoverished millions of American families.

Despite the severity, the bankers involved were not punished.  Worse, these banks have received trillions in subsidies from the Federal reserve since the crisis.

Unfortunately, this is yet another sign that bureaucracy and corruption in the US has become so severe, it’s very clear why the middle class that built the modern world is dying.

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