Toyota launched Scion in June 2003 with a radical announcement to customers: “We relinquish all power to you.”
Literally, Scion wants its customers to tell it what to do; in particular, to invent for themselves the cars they want to drive. The company will then assemble and deliver not merely a custom-designed car but a customer-designed car.
This is more than customization. This is self-customization, or to characterize it more precisely—because it is more than just customizing—it is self-invention.1 And self-invention is the future facing Baby Boomers.
Self-invention is nothing that companies do for customers. Self-invention is customers inventing what they want for themselves.
Scion is not the only company ...
