The Daimler Smart Car – an Open Innovation Success Story

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Jeffrey Tobias in crowdsourcing, Innovation, Open Innovation

Daimler’s “Style Your Smart” open innovation contest yielded 50,000 ideas in a six week period as 8,000 participants from more than 100 countries used their creativity to help the car manufacturer innovate.

“Style Your Smart” was open for around six weeks and participants were invited to use the company’s online toolkit to create, or they could submit their own designs. The take up was phenomenal. Within 10 days of launch 10,000 unique ideas had been submitted.

During the competition contestants exchanged opinions and evaluated each other’s ideas which resulted in more than 600,000 online ratings.

Cash Prizes

The submissions were adjudicated by an expert panel of judges who based their verdict on these ratings. The overall winner with the most creative design was Tamir Shefer from Jaffa, Israel who received prize money totaling €1,500 (approx USD $2,000). Some participants were also awarded cash prizes for being the most active on the website and three other designs picked up prize money.