Elon Musk launched into the transportation infrastructure debate in 2013, stating that current modes of transport are too slow and expensive. He published the \u201cHyperloop Alpha\u201d whitepaper, expanding on previous inventors\u2019 concepts for a new form of high-speed transportation and suggesting that this was the solution for \u201cthe specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart\u201d [1]. Musk\u2019s opinions often incite public controversy, and this whitepaper was no exception: prominent business leaders and academics raised doubts about the concept\u2019s safety and technical feasibility [2,3], and stressed the difficulty of making the project profitable \u2013 noting that the transportation infrastructure projects\u2019 high capital costs and adoption risks typically compel public rather than private funding [4].<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s SpaceX and Virgin Hyperloop One, both private companies, launched two open innovation programs to address these concerns. The first, SpaceX\u2019s Pod Competition, focused on the technical challenges, awarded its most recent trophy to a German team whose prototype propelled itself from a standstill to 457 kph on a 1.2km track [5]. The second, Virgin Hyperloop One\u2019s Global Challenge (VHOGC), was a startup\u2019s attempt to outsource its commercialization effort, asking entrants to develop a business plan for launching the VHO Hyperloop in the entrants\u2019 home markets [6].<\/p>\n
The VHOGC has achieved the company\u2019s initial goals: quickly review the potential of a wide range of markets, then focus VHO\u2019s efforts on development of the best prospects. It did this by adapting entrants\u2019 incentives across the timeline of the program, first maximizing the breadth of markets by promoting independent work in the initial \u201cideation\u201d phase (by promising to select 12 winning teams out of the 2,600+ competitors), then enhancing the success of top prospects by sharing best practices across the network of winning and finalist teams in the later \u201cconcept validation\u201d phase.<\/p>\n
In the ideation phase entrants developed business plans for implementing VHO\u2019s hyperloop technology in their home regions. Winners and finalists were selected based on their \u201cdemonstration of a real corridor opportunity, favorable economics, a favorable investment climate and the willpower to advance regulatory climate\u201d [6]. This phase was competitive, motivating entrants with the satisfaction of working on a topic of interest to their home region, and the promise that winning teams could work with VHO to validate their business plan in the second phase.<\/p>\n
VHOGC is now in that concept validation phase, which inverts the initial phase\u2019s competitive feel by organizing the winning and finalist teams into a collaborative community. In the short term VHO will work with the selected teams to validate their business plans, and in the medium term it will give those teams the opportunity to participate in the execution of their plan during a third \u201cimplementation\u201d phase. In lieu of public information about these second and third phases, I will lay out my suggestions for how VHO should proceed and identify a few key issues for readers to consider.<\/p>\n
Suggestions:<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n Short term:<\/u> One key risk to VHOGC is the possibility that the concept validation phase\u2019s collaborative feel will create the perception that winning teams have already \u201cmade it,\u201d and offer little motivation to continue innovating. VHO can counter this by announcing new policies to reintroduce a competitive element: first, that VHO\u2019s constrained resources limit their implementation phase support to a subset of the winning teams, and second, that winning teams will be replaced if their progress is eclipsed by one of the finalist teams.<\/p>\n Medium term:<\/u> VHO\u2019s current technology development process is entirely internal because VHOGC\u2019s scope was limited to the company\u2019s commercialization opportunity. Should they encounter any intractable R&D issues, they could launch a technology hackathon to harness the power of Open Innovation in a new context. This hackathon would attract a different group of technologists from those participating in SpaceX\u2019s Pod Competition; those entering Pod are interested in developing greenfield technology for a broad issue (\u201cdesign your own hyperloop\u201d), while those entering the VHO hackathon would be interested in the program\u2019s narrower scope (\u201cwork with VHO to fix this discrete technical issue\u201d). Moreover, the fact that VHO\u2019s R&D team is already funded and operating (compared to the bootstrapped teams entering Pod) offers entrants a stronger chance that they would have an opportunity to implement their hack.<\/p>\n Questions for readers:<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Word count: 779<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works cited:<\/i><\/b><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Hyperloop – most people have an opinion about the technical feasibility of Elon Musk's space-age proposal transportation. Setting this discussion aside for a moment, consider an equally fundamental question: how would you even fund it, much less run one profitably? Enter the Virgin Hyperloop One Global Challenge, an open innovation competition to crowdsource a startup's commercialization plan. Thoughts welcome \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11122,"featured_media":33941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[4883,4884,4885,2200,96,4636,4239,94],"class_list":["post-33878","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-plan","category-collaborative-community","category-competitive-market","category-elementary-school","category-elon-musk","category-hyperloop","category-open-innovation","category-startup","hck-taxonomy-organization-virgin-hyperloop-one","hck-taxonomy-industry-transportation","hck-taxonomy-country-united-states"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/assignment\/rc-tom-challenge-2018\/","yoast_head":"\n\n
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