Including factory workers in places like Poland and India. The employees can take the computers home, and allow family members to use them. And that Ford will use this site as an experimental e-commerce arena for its own marketing ideas. One can imagine many more benefits. Employees who are wired can also push ideas up the chain.
Innovation becomes democratized.
Rewards and recognition for cost-saving ideas and new manufacturing tricks can be granted rapidly and very publicly. Employees who don't want to buy from the Ford site will be only a click away from thousands of alternatives. Ditto for cars, credit cards, music, home mortgages, and so on. And that, in fact, is what the real deal is about. These companies will be able to leverage the collective buying power of their employees in order to get attractive discounts.