Industry Week has a blurb about a new partnership between Ford and TechShop.

TechShop is a membership-based workshop (originally in the San Francisco area) which provides access to specialized (read: Highly expensive) tools to inventors and do-it-yourself-ers like CNC machines, lathes, and precision plasma cutters.  TechShop is opening a facility in the Detroit area focused on automotive industry innovation.  The Big Blue Oval is signing on as a sponsor of a new location in Michigan– with the obvious benefit that it will have access (and cache) with inventors pushing the “bleeding edge” of development.  Ford has shown a recent ability to adapt and innovate, and this partnership seems to follow the storyline that the company is open to new ideas, and to taking input from external sources.

While TechShop is itself an interesting example of a business finding an un-filled niche, this is also a really interesting use of “crowdsourcing,” and holds great potential for growing local businesses in an area suffering from near-catastrophic decline.