Ford CEO Mark Fields says the legacy car manufacturer is trying to think like a startup
In the race to define the “future of transportation,” legacy car manufacturers are increasingly facing off against new rivals birthed not by the automotive industry, but by the technology industry. The disruption brought by fresh-faced players like Tesla, Google, Uber, and Lyft is forcing them to think like startups and embrace new ideas like autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing. Among the old-school car companies grappling with that shift is Ford, which is looking to develop innovative and advanced vehicles that can be available to everyone.“[Tesla] is endemic of how startups think,” Ford CEO Mark Fields said Tuesday, ahead of the New York International Auto Show. “We’re really encouraging everyone in our company to think like a startup. We want people to challenge custom and question tradition, we want them to not take anything for granted. We want them to ride the technology curb where it makes sense, we want them to think from a customer experience standpoint, we want them to move fast and test, and we want them to take appropriate risks.”
Indeed, Ford has invested a “decent portion of capital” into a model of experimentation unlike anything the more than 100-year-old company has done before. At CES, earlier this year, Ford introduced a series of experiments that would explore the idea of “mobility” from a range of angles.
“Each experiment is different and luckily Mark is giving us the ability to experiment and fail fast,” Erica Klampfl, Ford’s global future mobility manager, said. “But in all of these we do have gateways where we have learnings around our products, around our technologies, around the business aspects, and around the better world. Out of these things we’re identifying partnerships, how we want to play in the space.”...MORE
