How a 113-Year-Old Ford Motor Company Never Stops Innovating
You’d think that the first company to mass-produce and mass-sell cars would have it all figured out by now, or that a 113-year-old behemoth of a brand would flip on the cruise control and chill. Well, you’d be wrong.
Ford Motor Company may be 113 years old, and they may have been the first company to mass-produce and and sell 4-wheeled vehicles, but that doesn’t mean they can take a step back, at least not with their strongest competitors emerging from the technology sector and not the automotive. After all, the Chevy Silverado will always be rival to the F-150, and the Camaro to the Mustang, but the biggest threat comes from companies like Tesla, Google and even Apple nowadays.
Surviving, or even thriving as a company in the year 2016 isn’t like how it was in 1996, and although the guys that were in charge back then didn’t know it, things would never get easier, they’d get more complicated. Evolving technologies, pollution, world politics, government regulations, and even an orange man by the name of Donal Trump, all play into Ford’s economic climate. Therefore the only way to stay ahead, is by never stopping to invent.
Ford employees are amongst the most creative in the world, and they don’t only talk about it, they back it up with creations, patents and trademarks. As of August of this year, more than 4,500 Ford employees have already submitted invention disclosures, with nearly 1,700 of them first-time inventors, and since the beginning of 2015, more than 3,500 first-time inventors have submitted innovations. That’s not only impressive, that’s shocking.
I was able to witness three brand-spanking-new inventions while at a recent conference held at Ford’s world HQ building in Dearborn, Michigan, and while one of them seems a bit far out, rest assured all of them will be a necessity in the future.
These three videos will highlight the new inventions.
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