Caterham Seven

Project Splitwheel brings together gearheads from allover the world and allows them to vote on different concepts to create the world’s first crowdsourced sports car. Caterham Cars, the UK based manufacturer of the Caterham Seven has joined with Project Splitwheel and has agreed to create a prototype and ultimately manufactured in product, with the hope of being in full production by 2011.

“Cars are amongst the most hotly debated topics on the internet and for the first time we are going to channel some of that passion and energy into an exciting high-profile project with a real-world outcome,” says Piers Drake Project Splitwheels creator. “Every petrolhead dreams of running their own sports car company. Project Splitwheel is effectively the world’s first ‘virtual’ car manufacturer and as far as possible we will be asking our members to call the shots, just as if they were running a marque themselves.”

The project is open to anyone regardless of background. Users are able to collaborate on forums, Wiki’s and voting. Users will vote on key design features each week, everything from engine location to leather seats to the name of the car. Along with acting as a liaison with Caterham’s engineering team, Project Splitwheel will also provide guidance and input from automotive industry experts as required.

Project Splitwheel is on the right track, they’ve taken a huge task of designing a car and broke it into very small pieces. These pieces are much easier for the crowd to create and combine into a finished product. My only hope is that we don’t end up with something like The Homer:

You can register on the website now, they’re hoping to start Crowdsourcing this project in the new year.

Dragons Den is going into its 3rd season in Canada but originated from a similar show created by Sony in Japan which ran for 3 seasons, other versions have aired in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Netherlands and Finland. Most recently Mark Burnett signed a deal with Sony for the American rights the show will be called The Shark Tank,  and ABC are recently ordered a pilot. Contestants of Dragons Den will pitch their business or idea to the Dragons (businessmen and women looking for businesses to invest in) asking for an investment in exchange for a % of their business. After the pitch the Dragons pick apart the business trying to find out if it’s a good investment for their own money.  Several months back I had the opportunity to sit down with Sean Wise the Business Adviser for CBC hit business reality show Dragons Den but he is better referred to as the “Dragons Keeper”.  Some of you may recognize Sean’s name, is written several books, a regular columnist in the Globe and Mail, and also the CEO of VenCorps.

Sean says his show has real business people with real ideas, unlike Fox’s American Idol, which brings in contestant’s for shock value and amusement. “We don’t know pretend to know what the Dragons will fund, some things we thought they would turn down they have funded and others that we thought were a sure thing they have turned down” says Sean.

This season contesters had the opportunity to pitch their business to the Dragons thought YouTube, and the public could vote on their favorite pitches. Originally the top 10 would be invited to step into the den and pitch to the dragons but the quality was so high that an additional 8 were invited down to pitch their business.

Dragon’s Den is taking advantage of a growing trend in Crowdsourcing, using the crowd to organize the used generated content (the pitches), the crowds votes then bring the best to the top.  This process not only brings the top pitches to the attention of the dragons and also gives the community “ownership” of the show.   As a member of the crowd I want to know if the businesses I voted for were funded by the dragons. I was told that this season is already been a one million dollar deal a first for the show perhaps as one million dollar deal was a pitch that I supported by voting for it.

Dragon’s Den premieres September 29 on CBC television make sure you tune in to see if your favorite pitch made it to the air.

I decided to post a project to see how it works. Hopefully for the next week the community will continue to come up with creative logo designs.  Feel free to check it out and vote on your favorite logo.