An active process where brands and their customers work together with solvers, designers, and engineers to accelerate product and technology development. We call this group our Community and proudly work to empower genius ideas and brilliant solutions from Community members across the globe.

At LM, we believe that the best and brightest ideas can — and should! — come from anyone and anywhere, not just from within the organization. This approach, called Open Innovation, includes the use of crowdsourcing and co-creation with our Community on our crowd-powered SaaS platform. We launch Challenges, host brainstorms, ask for feedback from our customers and believe that you really can solve anything with a Community. We have developed a best-in-class open innovation platform and practice, called Launch Forth, which is used by some of the biggest and most respected brands in the world to inject innovation and inspiration into their organizations.

Most people know Local Motors as the 3D-printed car company, as we were the first to 3D-print vehicles. But 3D-printing is only one chapter in our manufacturing innovation story. The true manufacturing innovation is within the digitalization of the process, which is called Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM). At Local Motors, DDM creates significant unfair advantages: the ability to produce parts directly from a CAD file; elimination of investments in tooling; reduction in time lag between design and production and, best of all, elimination of penalties for redesigns — unlocking mass customization that was previously unobtainable.

An LM Microfactory is a physical operating space, designed for rapid prototyping, modular experimentation, and small-batch manufacturing of products. To-date, our global network of Microfactories includes locations in the US and Europe. It is this unique approach to making products in Microfactories that unlocks innovation and speed to market — our core competencies.