Fiat Mio: Prototype created with open innovation and crowdsourcing

Sherell J. Gamboa

Innovation Management

Dr. Eliette Marisel Barrios

27th February, 2022

Fiat Mio: Prototype created with open innovation and crowdsourcing 1

Fiat Mio: Prototype created with open innovation and crowdsourcing

Open innovation is an ideology that assumes firms should use external ideas as well as internal
ideas and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology (Zeegers,
n.d). Crowdsourcing is when you open it up to the public, usually starting with your customer base, to get
ideas or to perform tasks (Day, 2022). Fiat Mio was on a mission to create a prototype automobile by
transforming the decision-making process by using the concept of open innovation and crowdsourcing
and taking advantage of the innovation strategy.

Fiat Mio’s aim for this specific project was to get the company’s customers and potential
customers to help create a car that catered to their wants, needs and desired for the future and design
the world's first car by using the process of crowdsourcing and open innovation. The company created
Fiat Mio through the collection of ideas through market surveys, questionnaires and other data
collection processes on an official company website. Individuals were invited to share their ideas,
suggestions and recommendations which were necessary and important to be incorporated by
the company in the end product. The data collection was then viewed, filtered and sorted by employees
of the company; the best ideas and suggestions were then chosen.

The team created this prototype by obtaining ideas from approximately 17,000 participants, and
the selection and processing of more than 10,000 ideas along with that of the company’s employees.
When Fiat Mio was launched in December 2010, a great number of people showed up to claim the
prototype as their own, they were actually involved in making this prototype. This allowed the company
to create a customer-supplier relationship, they were able to acquire a vast number of ideas from
individuals outside of the company by using crowdsourcing.

There are two types of crowdsourcing methods, one is tournament based and the other is
collaboration based. In tournament-based crowdsourcing, members of a crowd compete to solve a
problem and the agent with the best solution wins. In collaboration-based crowdsourcing, members of a
crowd cooperate to solve a problem, bringing their collective expertise to bear on the problem (Afuah,
n.d.).

 Innocentive is an example of a company that uses the tournament-based approach, they are
the middle man. A company hires Innocentive to do the data collection and find the best idea for
whatever project the company has. Innocentive as the middle man finds out exactly what the company
Fiat Mio: Prototype created with open innovation and crowdsourcing 2

wants done and sends the issue and requirements out and get people to respond, whoever comes up
with the best idea wins a prize, award triggers ideas.

Fiat Mio on the other hand used the method of collaboration. What Fiat Mio did was create a
web-based platform and launched the project. The asked questions, got feedback, suggestions, ideas
from outside sources and filtered them until they arrive at the best decision. They collaborated the
outside source and classified them as decision makers, which allowed them to feel of value when giving
their remarks; with the ideas of those who worked at the company for instance the engineers, and this
was done until the project was complete. It is not a competition but rather everybody working together
in the decision-making process for innovation.

Innovation is not just represented by introducing or implementing new ideas or methods, it can
be defined as a process that involves multiple activities to uncover new ways to do things (toolshero,
n.d.). According to the Oslo Manual, there are four types of innovation such as, product, process,
marketing and organisational innovation. Fiat Mio used these four types of innovation when creating
this prototype.

Product innovation is a new product, or something that is being improved, Fiat Mio was a new
innovation using the concept of crowdsourcing. A new type of car that was being created with the
collaboration of the company and those who accessed the website and gave their ideas. It was a product
that was being created to cater to the needs and wants of people.

Process innovation is a new or improved method or delivery method, Fiat Mio used the process
of crowdsourcing to innovate this product, this was never done before. By using the method of
crowdsourcing, they were able to successfully create this product and show how using a different
approach can result in great things.

Marketing innovation, Fiat Mio researched into customer needs through crowdsourcing,
concept and prototype test with customers and the presentation at the Auto show of the prototype,
they were able to come up with the name Fiat Mio. They were already marketing the product from the
time that they launched the website for people to make decisions based on options given and people
could see step by step the process, while being a part of the decision making.

Organisational innovation is a new method used in business practice, by using crowdsourcing

to create this prototype this was a new business practice that was being tested to see how the
prototype would turn out. They had employees from different areas, put out the questions and filter
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through information to decide on the best one. The employees in the organization had to create a way
to minimize getting a bulk of information that they would not have enough time to go through.

If Fiat Mio was simply a prototype that would never be produced or marketed, the innovation
would have been the method or process used to create the prototype. No company had never used
open innovation or crowdsourcing to create a product, and they used this method and it was a
successful process. This had an impact on the corporate culture, it influenced the way of how things can
be done. It brought about changes using a media platform for innovation and marketing of this
prototype. It modified the way of thinking and generating ideas, you did not have to have solely your
employees brainstorming. The way they used their platform to receive suggestion and ideas and
gathered the information, with that of the employees of the organisation, was new and this allowed
them to use the creative common license to enable others to see that this prototype was created this
was and for them to be able to test it out themselves.

Fiat Mio was the first car which was registered under the creative common license. “A creative
commons license is a license issued by the copyright owner to allow anyone in the world to use his or
her copyright work in any manner consistent with that license. Creative Commons licenses are
essentially standard form license agreements which can be attached to a work to enable its use under
certain circumstances without the need to contact the author or negotiate terms of use” ( What Is a
Creative Commons License, 2021). The company chose this type of license because the prototype was
created collectively, which meant it was everyone’s car, but property of Fiat. Any other company that
wanted to create this prototype and sell it would be able to do so as long as they acknowledged Fiat.

Fiat Mio was an innovation that used crowdsourcing and it proved to be beneficial for the
company and others who have followed this blueprint. It brought about needed change to a company
that was already use to doing things a certain type of way and was instilled with their culture and norms.
This tactic was consumer based and it helped the company by doing much of the brainstorming for
them, by engaging consumers in the decision-making process of creating this prototype that catered to
their consumers needs and wants. This allowed the company to gain a competitive advantage and
become flexible in an environment that is consistently changing.
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Bibliography

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