DESIGN BY CROWD

摘要

When a consortium of US utilities launched a design-a-fridge competition, the winning product improved not one but two bottom lines. The brief was to design an appliance that could deliver the most energy savings per kilowatt-hour. Whirlpool scooped the prize and changed the industry - not only did consumers benefit from lower running costs, so too did the environment gain from reduced energy consumption. Test-Driving the Future outlines how design competitions, when done well, can lead to industry-changing innovation. The trick is getting them right as they don't always work. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), an agency of the US Department of Defense, ran a design competition for driverless vehicles. But the inaugural Darpa Grand Challenge for Driverless Vehicles was deemed a failure when not a single entry managed to cross the finish line. An assessment of the contest suggested that the teams had become bogged down in trying to transfer their models from the laboratory to the field.