Does BMW really break down the barriers, say, between designers and engineers?
What I tell designers is that their task isn’t just to do cool sketches that impress me. If they’re attractive and filled with emotion, I will be drawn to them. But another task is to get other people excited. They could say, “That’s not my job.” One could be very hierarchical. But I have to take the sketch and go to the engineering chief and make it happen. The task for us is to help create excitement around ideas, so every engineer that walks by the model has to be pulled in. The designer at BMW who says, “Here’s a sketch, build it,” won’t get very far. BMW designed the Project House where models are actually developed to force a lot of togetherness—of engineers, designers, marketing managers, accountants, and production people. How does that “closeness” help you work better and faster? The success of the whole [development] story depends on chemistry. The team of 300 people working on a new model is based in the Project House. The clay model, the virtual model, the computer data is
