Church of the Customer Blog
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August 05, 2004
Open-source your airplane
Boeing is making the design process for its next-generation passenger jet available for everyone to influence.
Church of the Customer reader Paul Van Cotthem writes:
Boeing is designing a new passenger plane, the 7E7 Dreamliner, an innovative airplane that will be efficient, fast, environmentally friendly, and unsurpassed in passenger comfort. They are asking the public to help in making the airplane a reality. Anyone can register for regular updates and newsletters that will help track the progress of the new airplane. You also get the opportunity to tell Boeing what you like and don’t like about air travel today, as well as the features you’d like to see in your dream airplane.
Rather than shrouding its design process in orgiastic engineering secrecy, Boeing is incorporating the input of end customers into the process -- the millions of people who fly each year. This is some welcome relief from the tyranny of cost-minded purchasing agents who purchase or lease planes from Boeing. At the same time, Boeing gets kudos for worldwide community building in the process.
Will community building among end customers help Boeing in its fierce competition with Airbus?
In the world of B2B evangelism, the more that end customers are intertwined in the knowledge-creation process with business partners, and vice versa, the better for everyone.
Other blogs that reference Open-source your airplane:
» Help Boeing design their next airplane from It's the customer, stupid
Church of the Customer has a post about Boeing inviting flyers and aviation enthusiasts to help determine what their new passenger plane, the 7E7 Dreamliner, should be. How cool! You can sign up on their website. Unfortunately, their message board [Read More]
» Want to be an airplane designer? from Marketing eYe blog
Now you can tell Boeing how to design their engineers. Sign up here and let them know what they should build in their new airplanes.
This move, if well publicised by Boeing through press releases, will help them in 2 ways... [Read More]
I picture a final design something like Powell Motors "The Homer."
