Hyperloop Transportation Technologies: Building Breakthrough Innovations in Crowd-Powered Ecosystems

Lynda M. Applegate; Terri L. Griffith; Ann  Majchrzak

Case | HBS Case Collection | May 2017 (Revised October 2017)

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies: Building Breakthrough Innovations in Crowd-Powered Ecosystems

by Lynda M. Applegate, Terri L. Griffith and Ann Majchrzak

Abstract

Dirk Ahlborn, co-founder and CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. (HTT) looks back at the evolving organizational design and community that allows HTT to be crowd-powered. Since the founding in 2013, HTT has dealt with building an organization with less than 20 employees, yet serving multiple governmental entities and having over 25 patents pending . Rather than employees, HTT has invited over 800 people to contribute a minimum of 10 hours per week in exchange for future equity. Everything from recruitment, incentives, culture, technology, and intellectual property controls are handled with the idea that a community can work together to solve a global problem (transportation) by “turning a collective passion into a vision and the vision into a reality” (Ahlborn quote). The open question is how this approach will fair as the organization moves from design to delivery

Keywords: collaboration; crowdsourcing; entrepreneurial finance; innovation; organizational design; product development; Startups; Business Startups; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Product Development;