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Makerspaces and Local Economic Development

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Abstract

The maker movement has risen from a fringe hobby to a prominent lifestyle with important implications for economic development. In the past, tools have been available only to those working in firms and industry or those willing to pay for their procurement. The maker movement increases access to tools and training, potentially altering the capability of the general public to participate in product development. This study explores makerspaces and how they contribute to economic development through business generation and sustainment. Based on interviews with members and the management of makerspaces, along with local government officials in Georgia, the author finds four principal contributions to economic development: (a) creating a cultural change by encouraging entrepreneurship in the community, (b) supporting small business growth through the provision of services, (c) providing workforce training, and (d) increasing workforce retention. However, in part because of their recent development and small memberships, makerspaces are unlikely to launch many entrepreneurs into their communities anytime soon. As such, governments should avoid making excessive commitments to makerspaces before they provide greater evidence of tangible contributions, but allowing them an expanded role in formal education can enhance their ability to incubate a “maker” mind-set.

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... 2021). This definition encompasses a variety of third places of similar nature in terms of their characteristics and external features (van Holm, 2014), such as hacklabs (Maxigas, 2012), makerspaces (Smith et al., 2013;Hatch, 2014;van Holm, 2017), and fablabs (Gershenfeld, 2005;Walter-Herrmann and Büching, 2013). Hackerspaces bring together communities of tech-savvy users around the use of nascent technologies, ''engaging them in collective action and developing rules to generate, share and govern innovation resources'' (Cohendet et al., 2021, p. 2). ...
... Hackerspaces bring together communities of tech-savvy users around the use of nascent technologies, ''engaging them in collective action and developing rules to generate, share and govern innovation resources'' (Cohendet et al., 2021, p. 2). A growing number of hackerspaces have been founded worldwide (Guimarães Pereira et al., 2017) and there is an ongoing debate about their economic significance (Anderson, 2012;Williams and Hall, 2015;van Holm, 2017;Svensson and Hartmann, 2018;Boutillier et al., 2020), in particular with regard to their impact on entrepreneurship (Mortara and Parisot, 2016). The relevance of hackerspaces for innovation and regional development is supported by anecdotes from * Corresponding author. ...
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Article
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... Table 5 summarizes each of the nine themes and their corresponding references from the sample. (Bolli, 2020;Cattabriga, 2019;Fuet al., 2021;Lindtner, 2014;Zhao & Zou, 2021) Maker movement in different regions European and North American makerspaces Asian makerspaces African makerspaces Latin American makerspaces (Rejeb & Roussel, 2022;Carqueijó et al., 2022;Corsini, 2022;ElHoussamy & Rizk, 2020;Fu, 2021;Haldar & Sharma, 2022;Lindtner, 2015;Manzo & Ramella, 2015;Martins & Albagli, 2020;Parlak & Baycan, 2020;Ramella & Manzo, 2018;Santos et al., 2018) Maker movement and the city culture City's development Citizen engagement in issues Regional entrepreneurial growth (Besson, 2021;Budge, 2019;Lin, 2019;Niaros et al., 2017;Schmidt, 2019;van Holm, 2017) ...
... (Schmidt, 2019). Makerspaces contribute to economic development by fostering cultural change, bolstering small business growth, providing informal workforce training, enhancing workforce retention, promoting entrepreneurship, offering office space and specialty tool access, and imparting tool usage skills, especially for younger individuals (van Holm, 2017). ...
Preprint
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Article
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... A qualitative study of makerspace managers indicated a belief that these spaces are key developers of important workforce skills [7]. While this is in line with widespread anecdotes and notions about makerspace impacts, the ability of these spaces to build workforce-relevant skills among their users has not been well-quantified. ...
... With public spaces losing value when broken up, Benkler (2017) supports the value of collective spaces for encouraging innovation and creativity, arguing for greater access to such sites. Enacted on the high street, distributed social surplus can be seen through spaces of collaborative production, including non-hierarchic new workspaces 14 which promote up-skilling for marginalised groups and ideas sharing (Van Holm, 2017). Referring to the importance of creative and cultural industries in local economies, Lewis, Laine and Cringle (2022) express the importance of temporary experiments and shared workspaces -often drawn to high streets -which support local wealth through creating opportunity for collaboration, cooperatives, partnerships and collectives that drive broader economic value. ...
Research
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Article
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The last decade has witnessed increased demand by employers and workers for greater flexibility, especially regarding remote and hybrid work. There has therefore been a substantial increase in academic interest in coworking, including within business and management studies. We conduct a systematic literature review of research on coworking and coworking spaces (CWS) to argue this field is now sufficiently developed to merit recognition as an important element of discussion surrounding workplaces of the future. We outline the core themes in coworking research and identify three key research weaknesses relating to common understandings of community, context and change. The article then advances a future research agenda based on two avenues of enquiry. First, greater attention needs to be paid to the value propositions of CWS as businesses. Second, the concept of embeddedness should be used to better understand CWS in their local and national contexts, and we argue for a broader, place‐based analytical focus on CWS. We present two possible future scenarios for CWS, based on opposing forces of homogenisation and differentiation, and we outline their relevance for further debate surrounding workplaces of the future.
... Makerspaces are recognized for their role in facilita ng economic development by promo ng entrepreneurship and providing informal training and skill development within communi es (van Holm, 2017). This recogni on has spurred their expansion, especially in the Global North, notably in Europe and the United States. ...
... It also involved the creation of a physical space, inspired by high-tech makerspaces across the globe but adapted to the local needs and conditions as expressed by the community. Makerspaces are used as an umbrella term for small-scale manufacturing facilities, which are often used by local communities as a physical platform to share resources and access to critical manufacturing equipment (Niaros et al. 2017;van Holm 2017). Makerspaces could also be seen as spaces for the co-production of convivial tools that "foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user" (Illich 1973, p. 22). ...
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A reconceptualisation of technology, as a vital component of modern society cutting across all its other aspects, is required to achieve social and environmental sustainability. This paper presents a convivial technology development framework using the concept of “cosmolocal” production. The latter captures the dynamic of dispersed technology initiatives, which exhibit conceptualisations of living, working and making around the commons. It is a structural framework for organising production by prioritising socio-ecological well-being over corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. From the vantage point of Tzoumakers, a cosmolocal initiative in which the authors participate, this paper offers an empirical account of its conception and evolution. We further examine its relation and cooperation with various similar interconnected places in urban and rural settings.
... Our contributions to the HCI community therefore are 1) an empirical understanding of how maker entrepreneurs from low SES backgrounds navigate their ecosystem, using maker morale and technology, not only to make but also, to support their cause during the manufacturing process and 2) because of the challenges to emerge from this research, we suggest opportunities for HCI researchers and designers to help maker entrepreneurs translate moral values into economic values. Previous research discusses economic growth [7,13,17,21], economic regeneration [22][23][24], economic developments [17,25,26] however, this study adds dimensions to maker-entrepreneurship and identifies opportunities for HCI researchers and designers to help members of this community transfer morals into economic value creation. We also attempt to shed some light on challenges low SES maker entrepreneurs face in creating economic value. ...
Preprint
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The DIY and maker movement has enabled makers to venture out into entrepreneurial endeavours. Members of this community are known to experience a sense of fulfillment when personal moral codes of ethics are maintained, even when they are from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Our work seeks to explore ways in which this fulfillment is also carried over into an entrepreneurship context. This paper applied a qualitative study involving 9 maker-entrepreneurs from low SES backgrounds, where contextual interviews and a cultural probe inspired method was employed to capture their motivations, business management and overall entrepreneurial trajectory. Our findings indicate maker-entrepreneurs’ clear motivations for being a part of the maker culture, while having a strong sense of responsibility towards the environmental and social issues, as well as the challenges faced by low SES maker-entrepreneurs. This work is intended to add to the low SES maker-entrepreneurship discourse in HCI and identify opportunities to help these entrepreneurs in economic value creation.
... Hence, it is not hard for individuals with entrepreneurial aims working within Fab-Spaces' communities to tap into the knowledge and expertise of others not only to learn about digital fabrication and other manufacturing processes, but also to gather earlystage feedback on their designs and product ideas (Halbinger, 2018). This sometimes leads individuals who initially had no entrepreneurial intentions to "accidentally" discover opportunities for commercialisation and embark on an entrepreneurial journey once they realise there is a demand for their inventions (Shah & Tripsas, 2007;van Holm, 2017). ...
Thesis
This thesis contributes to sharpening process theories of organisational emergence. It studies the co-evolution of new product development (NPD) and new venture creation (NVC) activities for nascent entrepreneurs in the process of commercialising their idea. The empirical context selected for studying this process is that of entrepreneurs in Fabrication Spaces, open design and fabrication workshops. This thesis unpacks and analyses the process of entrepreneurial innovation in its defining components, providing empirical evidence for its challenges and associated key resources from the perspective of entrepreneurs. By focusing on the very initial stages of such process, I identify some of the key antecedents of entrepreneurial innovation behaviour and how they are harvested through Fabrication Spaces as example of entrepreneurial support systems. The outcome of the study is the introduction of a revised view on the contemporary process, resources and context of entrepreneurial innovation, a phenomenon that is gaining particular relevance in digital, crowd-sourced, and collaborative economies. First the exploratory research draws upon a review of the literature on the venture creation process for nascent entrepreneurs. This review highlights one major knowledge gap, concerning how the development of technical products and production capabilities in a new venture intertwine with the development and launch of the business. To address this gap, an initial theoretical model is outlined and used to structure the analysis of data captured from 19 in-depth and cross-sectional case studies. Then, the social and technical resources employed by entrepreneurs to navigate the entrepreneurial innovation journey are mapped onto the corresponding stages and events of the process described by the theoretical model. This mapping uncovers new contextual influences for the process of entrepreneurial innovation, in particular for what concerns the role of acquired psychological and technical capital in the early stages of the process. Acquiring such capital through community embeddedness and resource sharing in Fabrication Spaces allowed nascent entrepreneurs to refine and perfect their venture ideas through rapid cycles of learning in line with the lean entrepreneurship approach and create venture prototypes through dispersed entrepreneurial agency. To strengthen these results, I run a cluster analysis of the current landscape of Fabrication Spaces available in the UK and confirm that, despite not addressing entrepreneurship directly in their agenda, these spaces are adapting their offering to increasingly accommodate entrepreneurial needs. The theoretical contributions help to sharpen and expand entrepreneurship process theories and suggest how Fabrication Spaces can complement the current available landscape of support systems available to start-ups by increasing the robustness of entrepreneurs’ propositions very early on and improving their chances to be later appreciated by entrepreneurship programmes and investors.
... Third, these open productive modes lead to the creation of original forms of commonsbased peer-production (Benkler, 2017) and, consequently, introduce important changes in the current intellectual property system, thus significantly transforming current firm-based structures of innovation. Finally, FabLabs have also been acknowledged to contribute to local development in terms of knowledge creation and sharing, entrepreneurship (West, Greul, 2016;von Holm, 2017;Capdevila, 2018), as well as social exchange and attractiveness (Browder et al., 2019;Le Nadant, Marinos, 2020). ...
Article
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The article suggests that the emergence of FabLabs and other collaborative spaces of innovation imply new modes of manufacturing, based on a more social, inclusive, and open approach than current industrial mass-production models. We argue that FabLabs are platforms of social manufacturing, allowing different combinations of interactions between industries and individuals, through their activities around making (producing goods from raw materials), hacking (re-using/combining produced goods), and coding (producing and re-using digital goods). The article also defines four different modes of social manufacturing depending on the technologies used (open or proprietary) and the location of manufacturing (local or industrial). The article contributes to the literature on collaborative spaces by explaining prospective scenarios of development in relationship to new modes of production. It also complements the literature by contextualizing the physical spaces where social manufacturing takes place. JEL codes: D20, L23, L60
... Establishing circular makerspaces (CMS) -makerspaces that promote circular making activities -is crucial for cities striving for sustainability. Depending on the establishment purposes, makerspaces can have two different governance models: bottom-up commons-based peer production (Benkler and Nissenbaum, 2006;Kostakis and Drechsler, 2015;Söderberg and O'Neil, 2014) and top-down public policy-based governance (Shea and Gu, 2018;Van Holm, 2015;van Holm, 2017). In the former, the makerspace is established and maintained by the people who are given equal rights to govern it, as in the case of Invention Studio (Forest et al., 2014). ...
Article
A growing number of cities are deploying circular economy practices to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Makerspaces are community-driven initiatives enabling the collaboration between a city's diverse stakeholders in that objective. They can enhance the citizens' contribution to circularity by engaging them in circular ''making'' activities (e.g., reuse, repair, sharing) and by providing them with novel means, skills, and knowledge in these activities. However, cities face various challenges during the process of engaging citizens to create a vibrant circular city. Based on an in-depth analysis of experiences and challenges in seven European cities, which attempted to embrace the SDGs through circular making activities, this paper presents ten engagement-related challenges and five strategies to overcome them. Integrating these challenges and strategies in a strategy-challenge matrix offers several recommendations for cities striving to address SDGs through establishing and maintaining circular makerspaces.
... Por lo tanto, para pensar creativamente, debemos ser capaces de mirar de nuevo lo que normalmente damos por sentado. george kneller LinkedIn analizó en 2019 las habilidades enumeradas en los perfiles de los candidatos que son contratados con la tasa más rápida y reveló que la creatividad es una de las principales en cuanto a "efectividad de la competencia organizacional y relacional", o habilidad "blanda", como se conoce comúnmente (Conaway, 2019;Lewis, 2019;Van Holm, 2017). Este resultado no es sorprendente: "Las organizaciones en todas partes necesitan personas que puedan innovar y concebir nuevas ideas y soluciones" (Conaway, 2019;traducción propia). ...
Book
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En un entorno en constante transformación en el cual es evidente que el posicionamiento en el mercado responde cada vez más a recursos intangibles como la capacidad de innovación o la creación de nuevo conocimiento, la creatividad se destaca como un elemento de gran importancia para asegurar la competitividad de las empresas y el desarrollo a nivel regional y global. Considerando que la creatividad es una facultad inherente a las personas que puede ser desarrollada de forma colectiva, para hablar de esta y su rol en la innovación, es necesario dar una mirada más profunda a todos los procesos que la componen. Esta cartilla tiene como fin brindar al lector herramientas que lo guíen en el proceso de ideación basado en fundamentos creativos que desde la investigación misma orienten las transformaciones que el planeta y la industria necesitan para generar cambios sistémicos y, de esta manera, contribuir a la mejora de la competitividad y la productividad en los diversos sectores a través de la ciencia.
... It supports the exploration of open-ended questions". Several pieces of research carried out on the topic of fab lab networks and makers movements highlighted problems of their economic sustainability, stressing -however-their culture-related role (Wang et al., 2015;Bianchini et al., 2015;Taylor et al., 2016;van Holm, 2017;. Nowadays, it is evident that Makerspaces and Fab Labs do not only produce physical goods, but they also develop knowledge and relationships, which are expressed through physical productions and activities. ...
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Making" and the Fourth Industrial Revolution have been extensively investigated in the last few years. Several pieces of research have been carried out on the topic of fab lab networks and makers movements; in many cases, these studies highlighted problems of their economic sustainability, stressing-however-their cultural-related role. Nowadays, it is evident that Makerspaces and Fab Labs do not only produce physical goods, but they also develop knowledge and relationships, which are expressed through physical productions and activities. The European Union has been particularly interested in the study and development of innovative ecosystems, which might serve as levers for sustainable growth, because of their focus on co-creation and the involvement of different groups of stakeholders. SISCODE Horizon 2020 project was developed according to this European requirement. Within the SISCODE project, a co-creation methodology for societal challenges was proposed and tested throughout ten pilot projects carried out by Living Labs, Science Museums and Makerspaces, and Fab Labs. In this paper, we are going to present the three pilot projects developed by three Makerspaces and Fab Labs (Polifactory (Milan), Maker (Copenhagen), and Fab Lab Barcelona) and discuss main insights on co-creation practices.
... Artisan entrepreneurship has increased globally in the last decade. This is due to several factors, including a shift to an entrepreneurial economy (Jaouen and Lasch 2015) and consumer reaction against globalism following the 2008 economic crisis (Bernabei and Power 2018;Curtis 2016), the increased social value of the do-it-yourself lifestyle after the 'Makers Movement' (Luckman 2015; Munro and O'Kane 2017; Ratten et al. 2019), the proliferation of online craft and social networks (Howard et al. 2014) and the affordability of creative tools (Hracs et al. 2013;van Holm 2017). ...
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Artisan entrepreneurship has been increasing in developed economies in the past decade. In order for artisan enterprises to thrive, these businesses would benefit from using technology to access global marketplaces, add value to their consumers and market beyond their local area. Unless operating as a collective, most artisan entrepreneurs manage microbusinesses with ten or fewer employees. Microbusiness owners face challenges to adopting technology including limited financial resources, lack of technological expertise and owner’s attitudes about technology. Extant research has not examined why and how artisan entrepreneurs introduce technology into their businesses. Crochet is an artisanal craft that can only be produced by hand without requiring any contemporary technological solutions. This collective case study explored how five women crochet artisan microentrepreneurs navigated the process of introducing new technologies into their businesses. Findings indicate that crochet artisan microentrepreneurs have diverse income sources, which are enabled by technology adoption. The communitarian nature of the artisan entrepreneur ‘ecosystem’ provides a supportive environment that facilitates the process of identifying, selecting and learning new technologies. Cost and perceived lack of self-efficacy are significant obstacles to technology adoption for crochet artisan microentrepreneurs. This study adds to the existing research on artisan entrepreneurship by exploring technology adoption in this context and sharing the perceived benefits and challenges experienced with other artisan microentrepreneurs.
... Makerspaces welcome inventors at all stages of the innovation process, from the ideation phase to the testing phase (Bergman & McMullen, 2020). Through interaction and collaboration, makers can identify problems early and make appropriate adjustments, leading to immediate feedback and improvement (van Holm, 2017). ...
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Innovation can play a vital role in economic freedom. However, innovation activities at the community level face numerous obstacles. Spaces like makerspaces and fabLabs vitalize innovation, education, and entrepreneurship within communities. Nevertheless, scarce research addresses the transient nature of these spaces; their premature cession adversely affects their members and the surrounding community. In this study, we develop a novel sustainability framework for community innovation centers through the lens of makerspaces that helps reveal when some centers remain open and meet their objectives and how others close and fail to do so. These centers possess economic and social growth potential, aligning with HCI’s mission to unlock human potential. Building on established ICT4D (Information and Communications Technologies for Development) frameworks, we studied makerspaces across the USA. The resulting framework highlights the importance of fostering a community through the interactions between people and resources, supported by an integrated management, process, and finance infrastructure. This work provides an understanding of how to foster sustainable innovation at the community level.
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This article presents two cases that join user-driven innovation and additive manufacturing (AM) to examine latent business opportunities for AM in the medical sector. The first case arose as a response to shortages during the early stages of the covid 19 pandemic. The second case, explored in more depth, came from maker-medical collaboration during preparation for a life-threatening operation. Surgeons, confronted with a patient with a delicate heart condition, collaborated with a prototyping facility to print a realistic 3D model of the patient’s aortic aneurysm. The model allowed the surgeons to first study and then experiment to determine the most effective operation procedure before the actual operation, which shortened the surgery time by approximately 70%. Reducing surgery time creates two forms of value: improving patient outcomes and reducing costs. Shorter times under anesthetic and on cardiopulmonary bypass correlate with better surgical results. Reducing healthcare costs brings broad societal benefits in both publicly and privately funded healthcare systems. We outline a case for makerspaces to capture value by joining their expertise and manufacturing equipment with the needs of nearby healthcare systems for novel business development.
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The rapid pace of technological change has been pushing firms to make their innovation processes more open. However, both inbound and outbound processes are complex to manage, especially for small businesses. These firms have their innovation activities constrained by missing capabilities, financial resources, and market reach. However, the existence of innovation intermediaries may overcome these issues by fostering collaboration among different stakeholders and thus bridging the gap between technological opportunities and user needs. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze how collaborative spaces intermediate small business innovation. A multiple case study comprising five collaborative spaces was carried out. Results indicate how each type of collaborative space may facilitate innovation according to their intermediation roles, type of governance, main members/users, type of knowledge produced, and the core elements of attraction they offer.
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Pacific Island communities are facing disruptions to supply chains from natural disasters and a changing global environment, which have become more acute following the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, it has been demonstrated how flexible systems can enhance resilience in low-resource environments, such as adapting to changing consumer needs and minimizing supply chain disruptions. This paper considers how the development of a flexible system for conducting a risk assessment on a product that was developed and manufactured in a Makerspace environment would have application in Pacific Island communities to improve resilience. Using a participative action research (PAR) approach, a traditional product risk assessment is refined through iterative PAR cycles to reconceptualize it into a structured simplified risk process. The resulting product development risk assessment process (PDRAP) demonstrates that it is possible to adapt a detailed systematic risk assessment process, such as hazard and operability analysis (HAZOP), to be more suitable and effective for low-resource situations requiring flexible solutions. The improved process provides greater system flexibility to empower people to develop products which may improve their resilience in an ever changing and complex world. The PDRAP process can improve product design and adaptability which assists safeguarding supply chains from system wide disruptions. With the emergence of Makerspaces in developing countries for supply chain recovery from natural disasters and a changing national strategy, the PDRAP provides communities with a low-resource approach for risk assessment to ensure the safe use of products fabricated using emerging low-volume, rapid prototyping, and manufacturing technology.
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Maker communities are typically guided by noneconomic incentives to produce a positive impact on society. In this study, we offer novel insights into makers’ personal values, understood as motivational goals. Specifically, we performed qualitative laddering interviews with 30 makers gathered via snowball sampling in Taiwan. This study maps the hierarchies governing the goals that motivate makers’ intentions to dedicate themselves to the maker movement, anchored in seven personal values: self-direction, hedonism, benevolence, universalism, stimulation, power, and achievement. Accordingly, the findings in this study extend the literature concerning the maker movement; these practical contributions can enable manager and practitioners to develop an ecosystem that favours the development of maker communities.
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The question of whether China can become a creative nation has been a topic of much debate in academic circles. The Chinese government has expressed its belief that China can develop a unique form of creativity to move the country from the periphery to the center of the global creative ecosystem. This perspective has led to a series of state-led trials and experiments, including the adoption of cultural and creative industries, creative clusters and cities, and the recent maker movement. This paper utilizes the center-periphery theory to analyze the emergence, development, and evolution of China’s maker movement, aiming to revisit the creativity issues in contemporary China. Based on three years of ethnographic research, the paper unpacks the maker movement at three interrelated levels: individual, organizational, and urban. Empirical data indicates that the transformation of China’s maker movement is characterized by commodification, formalization, and infrastructuralization processes. The tension between growth and development, and stability and control has turned the once grassroots maker movement into a contested creative hybrid. This paper challenges the conventional view that China is resistant to change and incapable of creativity due to institutional and ideological influences. It demonstrates how an alternative mode of creativity can emerge outside global creative centers and proposes a new perspective on China’s potential to become a creative nation.
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Coworking to środowisko pracy nowego typu, wspierające produktywność, kreatywność i innowacyjność pracujących w nim jednostek. Niejednoznaczność tego pojęcia oraz wielość perspektyw poznawczych doprowadziła do związanego z nim chaosu terminologicznego i metodologicznego. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest uporządkowanie obszaru badawczego poprzez przedstawienie badań coworkingu w perspektywie organizacyjnej na podstawie krytycznej analizy literatury przedmiotu.
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Artykuł przedstawia zmiany rozmieszczenia różnych typów coworkingów w Warszawie, a także czynniki wpływające na ich wybory lokalizacyjne. Wyniki badań pozwoliły oce-nić, czy i w jaki sposób powstanie coworkingów i przemiany modelu ich działalności wpłynęły na strukturę przestrzenną miasta. Na podstawie analiz można stwierdzić, że w Warszawie oddziaływanie to nie jest znaczące z uwagi na stosunkowo duże podobień-stwo przestrzennego wzorca rozmieszczenia nowych przestrzeni pracy do lokalizacji obiektów biurowych. Jednocześnie widoczna była tendencja do częstszego niż w przy-padku biurowców wybierania przez coworkingi lokalizacji centralnych, która uległa wzmocnieniu w okresie pandemicznym. W rezultacie rozwój coworkingów i ewolucja ich modelu sprzyjały rewitalizacji centrum miasta i były zgodne z modelem miasta monocen-trycznego, co wskazuje na istotną rolę dostępności transportowej przy wyborze miejsca lokalizacji działalności gospodarczej. Otwarte pozostaje natomiast pytanie o znaczenie wzajemnego oddziaływania między coworkingami a przestrzenią miejską w wymiarze sąsiedzkim w kontekście dokonywanych wyborów lokalizacyjnych.
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This article presents a case that joins user-driven innovation and Additive manufacturing (AM) towards latent business opportunities in the preparation for life threatening operations. Surgeons, confronted with a patient with a delicate heart condition, collaborated with a prototyping facility to print a realistic 3D model of the patient’s aortic aneurysm. The model allowed the surgeons to first study and then experiment to determine the most effective operation procedure before the actual operation, which shortened the surgery time by approximately 70%. Reducing surgery time creates two forms of value: improving patient outcomes and reducing costs. Shorter times under anesthetic and on cardiopulmonary bypass correlate with better surgical results. Reducing healthcare costs brings broad societal benefits in both publicly and privately funded healthcare systems. We outline a case for makerspaces to capture value by joining their expertise and manufacturing equipment with the needs of nearby healthcare systems for novel business developments.
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In the current labor market, assistive technology (AT) is vital to employment for people with blindness or low vision (B/LV), yet we know little about their AT use in the workplace. The purpose of this descriptive study was to increase our knowledge in this area. Participants were 314 employed people with B/LV who completed an online or phone survey about AT used on the job and perceived skill level, satisfaction, and challenges experienced with their workplace AT. Two researchers utilized content analysis to code open-ended responses and descriptive statistics were used to analyze quantitative data. Self-perceived skill levels were moderately high to high for each AT. Satisfaction with AT was generally high, but 15% or more of participants expressed dissatisfaction with their AT for five tasks. Dissatisfaction with AT for some work tasks differed noticeably by type of AT being used to accomplish the task. Accessing certain software, websites, or digital documents was the most common challenge experienced, mentioned by 59.1% of participants, representing an ongoing problem in the technological workplace environment for people with B/LV. In addition to websites, specific areas that present access or utilization challenges are slide presentation software, PDFs, spreadsheets, virtual meeting software, and printed material.
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Makerspaces democratize technology access and therefore improve the chances for innovation and entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, we know little about how innovation happens in collaborative innovation spaces like makerspaces. To unleash the full potential of makerspaces, it is essential to understand what resources and environments support innovation for makerspace users. Against this background, this research study aims to explore how different makerspace user groups leverage makerspace resources during their innovation process. To achieve this, we use the resource-based view in combination with an open innovation perspective and examine the relevance of makerspace resources (knowledge, technology, social, and financial) during the different stages of the innovation journey (ideation, development and prototyping, commercialization and diffusion). In contrast to prior work, we focus on different makerspace user groups within an industry-specific makerspace and investigate how open innovation strategies (inbound, outbound, and coupled) are used to leverage the makerspace resources to develop innovation projects. Since the object of investigation is broadly unexplored and complex, we use an embedded single case study approach to explore 10 different projects within a makerspace with a specific focus on photonics. Photonics is described as a so-called enabling technology that carries a considerable potential for cross-industry innovation. The qualitative content analysis revealed that professional and hobby users differ in their makerspace resource use and their modes of openness across the innovation journey. Furthermore, we find that makerspaces can take the role of a facilitator or incubator depending on who uses the makerspace to innovate.
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Graduates of engineering programs have to be enabled to create hardware products by having easy access to methods for designing, manufacturing, distributing and learning. Such capabilities can be hosted in makerspaces. The makerspace approach remains immature in many developing economies, such as Jordan. Academia in Jordan is considered mostly research-oriented, while the industry is concerned purely with commercial returns. However, higher education institutions in Jordan have realized that linking industry and academia is crucial for maximizing the value of research, as seen through the lens of commercial development. This study aims to establish a roadmap and framework model for developing engineering programs in Jordanian universities by establishing a makerspace to introduce hands-on teaching. Several steps must be conducted sequentially to achieve the objectives of the study, which will ultimately enhance higher education institutions in the field of engineering. The study focuses on establishing a makerspace to receive the necessary equipment to improve teaching methods and the modernization of some engineering courses. Therefore, it will help improve the quality of higher education and enhance its relevance to the labor market and society. Additionally, this trend will gain potential in the future with higher employability.
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This pictorial seeks to capture both the tangible and intangible aspects of site visits to Makerspaces situated in rural India. While over twenty-five Makerspaces across four regions were documented through conversational interviews, photography, sketching and reflective writing for the project, only a small selection of this wealth of visual and factual information, with a particular focus on rural locations, has been compiled in this pictorial. It provides a rich tapestry of Indian maker cultures, their contribution to local communities, and how these spaces interpret their role as facilitators of creation within the complex global narratives of sustainability.KeywordsMaker culturesSustainabilityCommunity engagementDigital makingMateriality
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The concept of disruptive innovation ecosystems relates to a type of ecosystem capable of delivering disruption in underserved markets. This idea can create serendipity for disruption through new ways of thinking and leveraging resources across businesses. However, scant research exists on what and how to design conditions for disruption utilising resources and capabilities at the boundaries of businesses. Based on network theory and characterisation, we evoke an alternative design mode using visuals and speech to generate rich data with participants in makerspaces. The qualitative and visualisation data is analysed using thematic and visual network analysis techniques, respectively. Our findings suggest three main conditions that may be satisfied to create serendipity for disruptive innovation ecosystems to emerge: Navigating high risks, creating new markets, and generating new roles. Our findings also highlight factors under these three conditions that may be promoted to create disruption. Combining the thinking “through design” approach using visuals and speech with network theory and characterisation, we demonstrate the significance of coupling conversations with drawings, thus moving past abstractions and helping participants to see and better understand the inner workings of their ecosystem attributes. Using theoretical constructs embedded in visualisations can help design researchers and ecosystem practitioners design conditions for disruptive innovation ecosystems. The originality of this work is in linking network theory and characterisation with speech and visual data capture and analysis, thus presenting a strategic asset and alternative way of thinking and acting on boundary spanning resources and capabilities in local ecosystems.KeywordsThinking through designDisruptive innovation ecosystemsMakerspacesSocial network theoryEcosystem attributes
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This paper critically examines how capitalist, alternative capitalist and non-capitalist ontologies and relations are negotiated in a hybrid makerspace that hosts both for-profit and non-profit entities and integrates community and commercial aspects. Despite a growing body of knowledge on the distinct characteristics of non-commercial makerspaces, few scholars have analysed them in relation to capitalism. This applies even more to commercial or hybrid makerspaces that remain so far under-researched in diverse economies literature. These spaces, however, can be of increasing interest given what we know about makerspaces as hubs of budding entrepreneurship and that some makers avidly pursue entrepreneurial objectives while others are reluctant to even consider commercialising their projects. In this paper, I employ an extended framework of diverse economies that understands capitalism as not only a form of socioeconomic organisation but also a cultural and political architecture. Followed by an overview of existing literature that sheds light on beyond-capitalist dimensions of makerspaces, I explore a case study of the Keilewerf, a hybrid makerspace situated in Makers District in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, disentangling how capitalist, alternative capitalist and non-capitalist ontol-ogies of sustainability-oriented makers co-exist and conflict with economic relations, knowledge production and relations with the state.
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Digitally fluent teachers are expected to contribute to the growth of digitally fluent students. The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable Digital Fluency Scale to determine the digital fluency of pre-service teachers. To create an item pool to develop a scale for digital fluency, the opinions of the focus group meeting participants were gathered by a qualitative method. After the pilot implementation of scale, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were applied. Data were collected from undergraduate students at a state university in Turkey to conduct for EFA (n: 302) followed by CFA (n: 274). The scale structure with 3 factors and 29 items was revealed. The scale explains 54.65% of the total variance. It was concluded that the Chi-square value (χ2 = 1189.10, df = 371, p <0.001) was moderately significant when the fit indices of the model tested with CFA were examined. It is seen that the other fit values for the model are within the acceptable fit value ranges. Higher scores from the scale indicate a high level of digital fluency.
Experiment Findings
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A kutatás célja a gazdaság digitalizációjához kötődő új munkavégzési formák tereinek vizsgálata a vidéki Magyarországon, kiemelten kezelve a közösségi irodák szerepét.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the United States and global economies unfolded, the sewing industry was one of many that faced widespread uncertainty. A narrative research study examined how artisan microentrepreneurs in the sewing space experienced entrepreneurial opportunity alertness as they navigated the early months of the pandemic. Findings indicate that participation in multistage artisan entrepreneur communities provided the greatest benefits for members with no perceptible disadvantages. Entrepreneurs with diverse coping strategies were more resilient to challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated consumer adoption of digital technology in the United States, which facilitated growth for microbusinesses that have digital fluency or are ready to adopt new technologies. Policy recommendations are to restore net neutrality and implement federal funding for nonemployer firms impacted by disaster so artisan microbusinesses can thrive in the digital space.
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Coworking and its merits and benefits have been under heavy scholarly investigation. Also in practice, the phenomenon with its characteristics and manifestations becomes increasingly relevant on many levels and for many different types of people and organizations. But why is that so, and how are the research activities distributed between researchers, countries, and journals? To answer these questions, we first analyzed existing literature and extracted the focal points of the respective approaches. We conducted a cluster analysis on the existing literature by analyzing data from the Web of Science. With these clusters, we show the development of the research stream and how the studies are connected. The findings point towards the relevance of coworking spaces for innovative behavior and knowledge exchange, making them a place for work and social exchange and a tool for pursuing daily work, innovative ideas, knowledge creation, and interaction. With these findings, we contribute to the understanding of this research stream as a whole and provide a deeper understanding of the available studies and how they are connected. This allows researchers to understand where the interest came from, where it is going and how they can contribute to the topic. Our study indicates that scholars should take a broad approach towards the phenomenon coworking. It set food in many different research areas and all of them are important for a holistic understanding, showing potential for interesting studies. On a practical note, the factors that coworking influences need to be rethought throughout the whole work environment.
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Innovation policies are increasingly questioned by researchers and policymakers in the face of the changing economy and with regards to the role played by local grassroots initiatives in driving structural change at the regional level. This paper aims to enrich existing policy frameworks by emphasizing the notion of local commons as a means to drive local innovation dynamics. Building on this latter concept, two policies are presented to supplement existing policy agendas: community-based policies and experience-based policies. The paper argues that these two types of policies may offer complementary ways to assist local communities in local discovery processes, thus opening new paths for inclusive growth and development.
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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to review the use of makerspaces for educational purposes by building a map that describes recent research in the field under investigation. Design/methodology/approach: The approach adopted in this research includes a systematic review of the literature, based on publications (from 2017 to 2019) through Google Scholar. The development of a coding scheme performed through the Card Sorting technique. Findings: Findings demonstrate that the use of makerspaces in educational contexts can support 21st-century skills; however, further research is sought on the application of makerspaces in formal education. Originality/value: This paper will be useful for researchers interested in constructionism educational methods in conjunction with technology. It can also help in identifying gaps in the literature of educational makerspaces by giving a clear picture of the under-investigated areas.
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The new turn to Mass Innovation and Mass Entrepreneurship (MIME) initiatives in China mark a concrete step to reconfiguring and appropriating the western maker movement rhetoric to fit China’s context. In this paper, we explore the nascent China’s maker movement under the guidance of the state’s MIME initiative to identify the key issues, actions, rationales, and logics of appropriation linked to this public policy agenda. Empirically, we employ a semantic network analysis (SNA) to identify policy frames of the two principal documents of the MIME issued in 2015 and 2018. Providing insight into the heterogeneous nature of MIME discourses and innovation policy in China, our study Sheds light on how social innovation derives from activism and connect with emerging creative cities discourse, entrepreneurship, and local economic development. Implication for the theory and practice of innovation policy are outlined.
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Concerns over the supply of skills in the U.S. labor force, especially education-related skills, have exploded in recent years with a series of reports not only from employer-associated organizations but also from independent and even government sources making similar claims. These complaints about skills are driving much of the debate around labor force and education policy, yet they have not been examined carefully. In this article, the author assesses the range of these charges as well as other evidence about skills in the labor force. Very little evidence is consistent with the complaints about a skills shortage, and a wide range of evidence suggests the complaints are not warranted. Indeed, a reasonable conclusion is that overeducation remains the persistent and even growing condition of the U.S. labor force with respect to skills. The author considers three possible explanations for the employer complaints and the associated policy implications.
Conference Paper
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This paper describes a peer-production movement, the hackerspace movement, its members and values. The emergence of hackerspaces, fablabs and makerspaces is changing how hacker communities and other like-minded communities function. Thus, an understanding of the nature of hackerspaces helps in detailing the features of contemporary peer-production. Building on previous work on ’fabbing’, two different sets of results are presented: (1) empirical observations from a longitudinal study of hackerspace participants; and (2) a theoretical description of hacker generations as a larger context in which peer-production can be located. With regard to (1), research data has been collected through prolonged observation of hackerspace communities and two surveys.
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In this essay, Erica Halverson and Kimberly Sheridan provide the context for research on the maker movement as they consider the emerging role of making in education. The authors describe the theoretical roots of the movement and draw connections to related research on formal and informal education. They present points of tension between making and formal education practices as they come into contact with one another, exploring whether the newness attributed to the maker movement is really all that new and reflecting on its potential pedagogical impacts on teaching and learning.
Conference Paper
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Capitalist economies are experiencing technological and institutional changes that some have described as potentially as important as a second Industrial Revolution and others, somewhat more modestly, as a development as important as the rise of the commercial Internet in the 1990s (Anderson 2012). Or, even more modestly, like the transformation of the internet in the context of Web2.0: the growth of the maker movement, facilitating user driven innovation and the emergence of bottom-up entrepreneurship, concomitantly with the emergence of crowdfunding, facilitating the funding of small-scale entrepreneurship outside the usual funding channels. These technological and institutional changes in the past decade have substantially lowered the threshold for entrepreneurs wishing to start their own businesses, across a variety of industries. In this brief note, I will outline what I have learned so far and speculate on what their results mean for theories of innovation, entrepreneurship, and the emergence of new industries.
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Mobile professionals can choose to work in offices, executive suites, home offices, or other spaces. But some have instead chosen to work at coworking spaces: open-plan office environments in which they work alongside other unaffiliated professionals for a fee of approximately $250 a month. But what service are they actually purchasing with that monthly fee? How do they describe that service? From an activity theory perspective, what are its object, outcome, and actors? This article reports on a 20-month study that answers such questions.
Conference Paper
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DIY, hacking, and craft have recently drawn attention in HCI and CSCW, largely as a collaborative and creative hobbyist practice. We shift the focus from the recreational elements of this practice to the ways in which it democratizes design and manufacturing. This democratized technological practice, we argue, unifies playfulness, utility, and expressiveness, relying on some industrial infrastructures while creating demand for new types of tools and literacies. Thriving on top of collaborative digital systems, the Maker movement both implicates and impacts professional designers. As users move more towards personalization and reappropriation, new design opportunities are created for HCI.
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Abstract This paper provides the first estimates of the labor-market returns to community college diplomas and certificates. Using administrative data from Kentucky, I find earnings returns of around 30 percent for associate’s degrees and diplomas for women, compared to returns of 10 percent or less for men. Certificates have a small positive return for women but an insignificantre turn for men. For all awards, the field of study with the highest returns is health. All awards correspond with higher levels of employment. ,,,,,,,,,,,, Corresponding author. We thank Ginny Kidwell for excellent research assistance, as well as Christina Whitfield, Alicia Crouch, Rion McDonald, and Aphy Brough at the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) for providing access to and helpwith their administrative data. All opinions are solely those of the authors. Introductio
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We draw several lessons from this story. First, entrepreneurship often happens when people are on their way to something else. Activities coalesce, and people find they have become entrepreneurs. Second, truly innovative start-ups are often the result of creative experimentation with novel ideas by outsiders to an industry. Experience guides the choice of a domain for exploration, but indifference to industry routines and norms gives an outsider the freedom to break free of the cognitive constraints on incumbents. Third, nascent entrepreneurs often encounter discouraging events along the way, but many persist and find ways around the obstacles. In their persistence they often have a little help from their friends, acquaintances, and work colleagues. Fourth, regardless of their ambitions and skills, the fate of nascent entrepreneurs is still in the hands of outsiders with connections, legitimacy, and money.
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This study provides one of the first estimates of the returns to different types of community college credentials—short-term certificates, long-term certificates, and associate degrees—across different fields of study. We exploit a rich data set that includes matched, longitudinal college transcripts and Unemployment Insurance records for students who entered a Washington State community college in 2001–2002. Our findings based on an individual fixed effect model suggest that earning an associate degree or a long-term certificate is associated with increased wages, particularly for women. We find that there is greater variation in returns to wages by the field of study than by degree type.
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This study examines the creation of innovation-related knowledge in virtual communities visited mainly by lead users. Such communities enable firms to access a large number of lead users in a cost-efficient way. A propositional framework relates lead users’ characteristics to unique virtual community features to examine their potential impact on the development of valuable innovation knowledge. The authors empirically validate this framework by analyzing online contributions of lead users for mobile service innovation projects. The findings indicate that the value of their contributions stems from their ability to suggest solutions instead of simply describing problems or stating customer needs. Lead users’ technical expertise also makes them particularly well-suited to develop new functionalities, but less so for design and usability improvements. The digital context favors the creation of explicit knowledge that can be easily integrated into the development of new products. Finally, contributions given by lead users in a proactive way contain more novel insights than reactive contributions such as answers to community members’ questions. The findings should help managers stimulate, identify, and improve the use of lead users’ input in virtual communities.
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The impending retirement of the baby boom cohort represents the first time in the history of the United States that such a large and well-educated group of workers will exit the labor force. This could imply skill shortages in the U.S. economy. We develop near-term labor force projections of the educational demands on the workforce and the supply of workers by education to assess the potential for skill imbalances to emerge. Based on our formal projections, we see little likelihood of skill shortages emerging by the end of this decade. More tentatively, though, skill shortages are more likely as all of the baby boomers retire in later years, and skill shortages are more likely in the near-term in states with large and growing immigrant populations.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
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We develop a process model of how users, an understudied source of entrepreneurship, create, evaluate, share, and commercialize their ideas. We compare and contrast our model to the classic model of the entrepreneurial process, highlighting the emergent and collective nature of the user's entrepreneurial process. Users are often ‘accidental’ entrepreneurs who happen upon an idea through their own use and then share it with others; more specifically, the development of an idea and subsequent experimentation, adaptation, and preliminary adoption often occur before that idea is formally evaluated as the basis of a commercial venture. Users also tend to engage in collective creative activity prior to firm formation—often within the social context provided by user communities—that results in the improvement of ideas. Finally, we provide detailed data on the prevalence of user entrepreneurship in the juvenile products industry. Copyright © 2007 Strategic Management Society.
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Accurate marketing research depends on accurate user judgments regarding their needs. However, for very novel products or in product categories characterized by rapid change—such as “high technology” products—most potential users will not have the real-world experience needed to problem solve and provide accurate data to inquiring market researchers. In this paper I explore the problem and propose a solution: Marketing research analyses which focus on what I term the “lead users” of a product or process. Lead users are users whose present strong needs will become general in a marketplace months or years in the future. Since lead users are familiar with conditions which lie in the future for most others, they can serve as a need-forecasting laboratory for marketing research. Moreover, since lead users often attempt to fill the need they experience, they can provide new product concept and design data as well. In this paper I explore how lead users can be systematically identified, and how lead user perceptions and preferences can be incorporated into industrial and consumer marketing research analyses of emerging needs for new products, processes and services.
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This study contributes to our understanding of the innovation process by bringing attention to and investigating the process by which innovators outside of firms obtain innovation-related resources and assistance. This study is the first to explicitly examine how user-innovators gather the information and assistance they need to develop their ideas and how they share and diffuse the resulting innovations. Specifically, this exploratory study analyzes the context within which individuals who belong to voluntary special-interest communities develop sports-related consumer product innovations. We find that these individuals often prototype novel sports-related products and that they receive assistance in developing their innovations from fellow community members. We find that innovation-related information and assistance, as well as the innovations themselves, are freely shared within these communities. The nature of these voluntary communities, and the “institutional” structure supporting innovation and free sharing of innovations is likely to be of interest to innovation researchers and managers both within and beyond this product arena.
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Conventional market research methods do not work well in the instance of many industrial goods and services, and yet, accurate understanding of user need is essential for successful product innovation. Cornelius Herstatt and Eric von Hippel report on a successful field application of a “lead user” method for developing concepts for needed new products. This method is built around the idea that the richest understanding of needed new products is held by just a few users. It is possible to identify these “lead users” and then draw them into a process of joint development of new product concepts with manufacturer personnel. In the application described, the lead user method was found to be much faster than traditional ways of identifying promising new product concepts as well as less costly. It also was judged to provide better outcomes by the firm participating in the case. The article includes practical detail on the steps that were used to implement the method at Hilti AG, a leading manufacturer of products and materials used in construction.
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In a study of innovations developed by mountain bikers, we find that user- innovators almost always utilize "local" information - information already in their possession or generated by themselves - both to determine the need for and to develop the solutions for their innovations. We argue that this finding fits the economic incentives operating on users. Local need information will in general be the most relevant to user-innovators, since the bulk of their innovation-related rewards typically come from in-house use. User-innovators will increasingly tend to rely on local solution information as the stickiness of non-local solution information rises.
Educators, Gender Equity and Making: Opportunities and Obstacles
  • S Justice
  • S Markus
Justice, S., & Markus, S. (2010). Educators, Gender Equity and Making: Opportunities and Obstacles. fablearn.stanford.edu.
Emerging hackerspaces–Peer-production generation. Paper presented at the Open Source Systems: Long-Term Sustainability: 8th IFIP WG 2
  • J Moilanen
Moilanen, J. (2012). Emerging hackerspaces–Peer-production generation. Paper presented at the Open Source Systems: Long-Term Sustainability: 8th IFIP WG 2.13 International Conference, Hammamet, Tunisia.
Barriers to women's involvement in hackspaces and makerspaces. accessspace.org
  • J Lewis
Lewis, J. (2015). Barriers to women's involvement in hackspaces and makerspaces. accessspace.org.
Why the Maker Movement is important to America’s future
  • Bajarin T.
Why your library may soon have laser cutters and 3-D printers
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Skill gaps, skill shortages, and skill mismatches: Evidence and arguments for the United States (Working paper 20382) Retrieved from http
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How makerspaces help local economies
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The nerd garage of your dreams
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The maker movement manifesto
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The democratization of entrepreneurship? Hackers, Makerspaces, and Crowdfunding. Paper presented at the Academy of Management
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Fab: the coming revolution on your desktop--from personal computers to personal fabrication
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Gershenfeld, N. (2008). Fab: the coming revolution on your desktop--from personal computers to personal fabrication: Basic Books.
Makers: Crown Business
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Anderson, C. (2012). Makers: Crown Business.
The maker movement manifesto: McGraw-Hill Education
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Hatch, M. (2014). The maker movement manifesto: McGraw-Hill Education.
Emerging hackerspaces-Peer-production generation
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Moilanen, J. (2012). Emerging hackerspaces-Peer-production generation. Paper presented at the Open Source Systems: Long-Term Sustainability: 8th IFIP WG 2.13 International Conference, Hammamet, Tunisia.