Location:

Google Headquarters Corporate Campus
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043
(Building 46 on Huff Av)

• Welcome to Google Corporate Campus
  Aimée Christensen, Team Member, Google.org

• Rethinking TH!NK in a “Valley Spirit”
  Joel Makover, Co-founder, CleanEdge Inc.

• Changing the World – One Car at a Time
  John Boesel, CEO, CALSTART

• The Idea and Purpose of This Meeting
  Jan-Olaf Willums, CEO, TH!NK GLOBAL AS.

The individual forum members present themselves briefly (with CV overheads behind) and their main interest in and expectations from today’s brainstorming session.

After John gives a CALSTART update of what is happening globally on the advanced vehicle front we suggest sharing various Forum members’ view of what trends they see and what they expect in the US and worldwide.
Jan-Olaf will then give a brief review of the TH!NK story and give an update on the company’s current status.
We will then open up for a roundtable discussion to extract what the group feels are the most important drivers that influence the individual’s mobility in the future, and what trends we see in the US and worldwide. It provides us for the setting within which we need to take action to “Change the World – One Car at a Time.”
The themes and issues brought forward will be captured “real time” by Eileen Clegg, a graphic facilitator.

Prof. Jan Taug of the Norwegian School of Management/Telenor, and Verna Allee, a California-based consultant specializing in networked business models will co-facilitate this session with Jan-Olaf and explain how we want to build on the resulting insights in the subsequent “World Café” brainstorming process.

Jan-Olaf, John and Joel will summarize the findings of the first session and lead a dialogue with Larry Brilliant, head of Google.org, to conclude the session with some reflections on what it takes to “change the world one car at a time”.
With that as the setting we will then discuss the issues highlighted in the backgrounder by creating “World Café tables” in three main topic areas.

THE PEOPLE: USERS and STAKEHOLDERS in the new Millennium

• COOL factor: The brand,, the “movement”
• How do we define the customer groups and create a following ?
• With small scale manufacturing a possibility, what new ownership structures would be advantageous for TH!NK?

Build, market, sell is the old marketing model. How do we create a community following, a “movement” with a COOL image. that will pull through products and service offerings? Which is our customer group, and how do we define and reach customer groups and engage them in creating the future and building demand with us?

THE ORGANIZATION of the 21st century

• Can we combine a global vision, combined with a local presence?
• How can we generate smooth logistics for a decentralized assembly or service?
• How do we disrupt the traditional car model with a new service and distribution network?
• How do we raise competence in our organization and service network?

Creative partnerships and enterprising networks are the trend in all types of industries. How do we create coherence and cooperation across diverse local economies and the multiple businesses that represent the electric vehicle industry web?
Given that we’re selling a computer on wheels, what types of new service and distribution models should we consider?
How can we work together to raise competence in our own organizations and in the service network overall?

THE INTERCONNECTED OUTER WORLD: New Links, New Responsibilities

• How do we link the TH!NK CITY to the outside world – the car as part of a wider system?
• INTERNET and Cellular networks and the Car – What is the Challenge for a City Car ?
• TH!NK and the Megacities: the Global Challenges of the 21st Century

We want to identify and support the critical interface between TH!NK CITY and the wider infrastructure and technology ecosystem. How can we best link the Internet and digital communication to develop unique opportunities for a city car? What kind of creative partnering and integration would be possible?

Each Forum member will spend 20 minutes discussing one of these issues at a World Café table with 4-5 others, and then circulate to another table for a new discussion at another table on another theme (or the same issue with others , if he /she wishes), before returning to the original table for a updated final discussion . The table hosts will help synthesize findings from all of each of the 8 discussion tables during the lunch break, distilling the key ideas with Prof Taug and Verna Allee.

In the afternoon session we will focus on creating concrete action items and priorities based on the results of the morning as summarized by Willums and Taug. We will breakdown the morning’s three focus areas into the following six headings.

THINK GLOBAL - Act Local

• Defining the key priorities to build a truly new global business concept around TH!NK?
• What can we learn from Toyota, Apple and Google?

THINK COOL - TH!NK COMMUNITY

• How to make the electric car – and especially TH!NK - cool and desirable ( - and to whom)?
• How to build a dedicated follower around the TH!NK and thus around electric cars in general?
• How do we make TH!NK a car that reflects the driver’s personality?

TH!NK INDIVIDUAL - TH!NK MODULAR

• How important is local manufacturing?
• How flexible should we be?
• What can we learn from other manufacturing industries?
• How do we avoid the manufacturing issues facing the Big 2?

TH!NK IT

• How do we concretely bring IT and Silicon Valley thinking into the transport sector?
• How can we truly make the TH!NK a “computer on wheels”?
• What are the advantages of having a truly networked car?

TH!NK ENVIRONMENT , COMPETENCE, SERVICE

• What are the most important steps to build competence in manufacturing and services?
• How do we bust out of the traditional car dealer-customer interaction?
• How can we provide widespread service most cost-effectively?
• How do we reduce the “environmental footprint” of the value chain and the car use?

TH!NK FINANCE and OWNERSHIP

• What new business models are possible for an electric car?
• How do we best address the high capital cost of the batteries?

Each Forum member will spend 6 x 20-25 minutes discussing one of these topics at a World Café table with 4-5 others, having the opportunity to either cover all six areas, or discussing some areas in depth with different people at another table.

Summary and Conclusions: Where do we go from here?