The Future of Manufacturing

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NewCo Shift Forum

Launch Forth represents a new approach to product development

Elle Shelley during NewCo Shift Forum 2017

You’ve probably seen Local Motors’ unique and arresting automobiles around the Internet (the company is credited with creating the first 3D printed car), but what you may not know is that Local Motors has birthed a maker community and platform, Launch Forth, that engages more than 70,000 “solvers” who engage with projects from companies as diverse as GE, Boeing, and many more. In this short talk at the NewCo Shift Forum earlier this year, Elle Shelley, lead at Launch Forth, walks us through an entirely new kind of innovation platform.

John Battelle: The next speaker, Elle Shelley from Launch Forth, a division of Local Motors. If you haven’t heard of Local Motors, you just got to go Google it because the cars that they make are insane.

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Fail Fast, Not Over Decades: Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke on The Biggest Turnaround of His Career

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If you’re of a certain age, the Kodak name evinces a simpler era — a time when taking a picture was a revelation, and photographs were precious — each exposure was finite, a “roll of film” only offered 24 or 36 shots, and it cost money (and time) to actually see your work developed. Selfies? Who had time for selfies?!

During that era, Kodak was Instagram, Apple, and Sony all rolled into one, a massive, 140,000-person icon of American capitalism. The company’s market cap peaked at $30 billion — huge for its time. But the relentless advances of digital drove Kodak to a humiliating bankruptcy in 2012, one that became emblematic of how large companies can fail to innovate.

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