Future of Making

8/9/2019 Future of Making

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T h e F u t u r e o f M a k i n g

T ch ology Ho izo s P og am124 University Avenue, 2nd FloorPalo Alto, CA 94301 > 650.854.6322 > www.iftf.o g



©2008 Institute for the Future. All rights reserved. This report is proprietary for

Technology Horizons Program members. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.

about th …

Technology horizons Program

The Technology Horizons Program combines a deep understanding of technology and societalforces to identify and evaluate discontinuities and innovations in the next three to ten years.We help organizations develop insights and strategic tools to better position themselves for thefuture. Our approach to technology forecasting is unique—we put humans in the middle of ourforecasts. Understanding humans as consumers, workers, householders, and community mem-bers allows IFTF to help companies look beyond technical feasibility to identify the value in newtechnologies, forecast adoption and diffusion patterns, and discover new market opportunitiesand threats. For more information about the Technology Horizons Program, contact Sean Nessat [email protected], (650) 233-9517.

insTiTuTe for The fuTure

The Institute for the Future is an independent, nonpro t strategic research group with morethan 40 years of forecasting experience. The core of our work is identifying emerging trends anddiscontinuities that will transform global society and the global marketplace. We provide ourmembers with insights into business strategy, design process, innovation, and social dilemmas. Ourresearch generates the foresight needed to create insights that lead to action. Our research spansa broad territory of deeply transformative trends, from health and health care to technology, theworkplace, and human identity. The Institute for the Future is located in Palo Alto, California.

auThor: David Pescovitz

ediTor: Jess Hemerly

Peer reviewers: Marina Gorbis, Alex Pang, Anthony Townsend

ProducTion ediTor: Lisa Mumbach

designers: Karin Lubeck, Yeshai Lang



I t oductio ................................................................................................................................ 1

D iv s.......................................................................................................................................... 2

T ds ........................................................................................................................................... 3

Implicatio s .............................................................................................................................. 16

insTiTuTe fo r The fuTure

The fuTure o f maKing : T H E WAY T H I N G S A R E M A D E I S B E I N G R E M A D E

Contents







2

Introduction

P t s b t

Social networking services are most commonly used for dating, job hunting, and keeping up with formerclassmates. But they can also be thriving hubs for collaboration and problem solving. Platforms for socia-bility are necessary in order to bring together large groups of experts to come up with the best solu-tions. Yet some vetting of people, and problems, is essential. The wisdom of crowds is only as powerfulas the crowd is wise.

e -m t t

The planned obsolescence of today’s technology doesn’t jibe with the increasingly green aspirationsof many consumers. A new mantra is emerging: Reduce, Reuse, Remake. Dissatis ed with the dispos-ability of many products, some consumers are learning to x things themselves, use old parts for newapplications, or, at the very least, provide unused technology to others who might remake it.

r t P a t

Passionate hobbyists blur the line between amateur and professional. These aren’t passive consumers butactive creators whose results often surpass that of accredited experts and big businesses. Take Wikipedia,for example. Paid, credentialed experts have traditionally written encyclopedias. In contrast, professionalamateurs who have direct knowledge of the topics they write about are Wikipedia’s primary writers.

a t T

Tools of design and production are following something akin to Moore’s Law but for manufacturing. Asthe cost of tools decreases and their capabilities increase, the barrier to entry for makers comes crashingdown. Consider computer-aided design (CAD) software, which used to be relegated to a market of archi-tects and industrial designers. Now, however, Google SketchUp offers a simpli ed toolset that, as the freeproduct’s tagline states, provides “3D for everyone.”

op -s e t

From P2P le sharing to open-source software, many people now have very different expectationsabout what should be free and open to customization. Their aim is to make technology work theway they want it to. Linux, an open-source operating system, powers a growing number of consumerdevices, from the PlayStation 2 to Motorola mobile phones. Apache, the Web server software, is at

the heart of nearly every commercial Web site yet it’s an icon of open-source software. Clearly, manu-facturers are beginning to embrace the open-source concept internally. The next step is to bring thesame mindset to bear on their relationships with their customers.

Q t a t t t

To compensate for the inordinate amount of time spent in virtual worlds, from IM conversations toSecond Life , many people have developed a newfound appreciation for physical, hands-on experi-ences. For example, the United States has seen a trending down in the average age of farmers. Anew documentary lm, The Greenhorns , explores this growing culture of young farmers driven byeco-motivation and the quest for authenticity. They’re getting their hands dirty. For them, reality isstill where the action is.

I spi d by th hack s, c aft s, a tisa s, a d ti k s who a livi g this

fo cast al ady, IFTF’s T ch ology Ho izo s P og am s t out to v s

gi th futu of maki g. Fi st, w id ti d th DrIVerS, th social a d t ch ological fo c s that push th fo cast fo wa d.





Wh th s p s t-day d iv s—t ch ological, social, co omic, a d cultu al—i t s ct

a d f d off o a oth , t a sfo matio al t ds m g . I ou s a ch, w u cov d

SIx TrenDS that will -shap how w d sig , p oduc , a d dist ibut thi gs:

P d f b t : f t p t t kt p

Fab labs, where nearly anything can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively, might take theStar Trek replicator out of the realm of science ction.

l t t m t : f t p t t t

Rapid manufacturing technologies, personal fabrication, and the networking of supply chains intoexible “supply webs” will lead to fast, customized, and often greener microniche production.

c t r&d: f r&d b t r&d t

Research and development is moving outside the traditional laboratory and into communities andnetworks where ideation, iteration, and cash rewards fuel progress.

n t k a t : f t t k t- p

Innovation is sparked by human interaction and the crosspollination of ideas. New networkingtechnology and social media keep the conversations and collaborations thriving both online and off.

g t e : f p t t t

Scale is built from the bottom up through open-source practices, peer-to-peer exchanges, newmodels for valuation, and a commons-based approach to commercialism.

“i y c ’t op it, y d ’t o it”: f iP t p t

Openness isn’t about giving away the farm but rather connecting with your consumers. In the nearfuture, open IP and innovation, especially in hardware, may be the best way to do business and buildrelationships with customers.

This forecast is supported with signals, present day examples that are like signposts pointing toward theevolution of larger trends: computer-controlled milling machines now available at Sears, for example, or the

thriving maker community at Instructables.com openly sharing their project plans. Finally, the report closeswith implications for your organizations. Consider these to be guiding principles informed by the forecast,from “fail early and often” to “reward solution seekers.”

This forecast is also illustrated on the accompanying map. Think of it as an at-a-glance view of the futureof making. The map was distributed publicly at the Bay Area Maker Faire 2008 under a Creative Com-mons license that enables anyone to “remix” the material and create new works from it for non-commer-cial purposes. We chose to use the Creative Commons license because it embodies the open-sourcemindset that’s so integral to the future of making.



4

While the price of tools drops, the tools’ power and preci-sion are increasing. From Google’s SketchUp simpli edCAD software to sewing machines that connect to yourlaptop, it’s become much easier for an individual to makewhatever he or she imagines. Those capabilities will con-tinue to increase, reminding us of the days when everygarage had a workbench and sewing rooms were commonin large homes. Only this time, the amount of stuff thatcan be homebrewed will increase exponentially.

Imagine that you’re about to host a margarita party andyour blender breaks just before the guests arrive. Instead

of rushing to a store, you go online, click the model youwant, hit “print,” and a machine on your desk kicks intooperation and prints out the components of the blender.Snap them together and it’s tequila time!

Several technological developments are converging thatmay pull the replicator out of Star Trek and put it in ourhomes, or at least into a Kinko’s-like fab lab down theblock. The idea is similar to desktop publishing, but forproducts instead of paper.

Product designers have been printing out objects formore than a decade. Load a digital design into a machineand it drips out thin beads of plastic and glue, buildingup layers until the object is complete. While these 3Dprinters improve in quality and drop in price, researchersare making headway on printable electronics—circuitsdesigned to be spat out of modi ed inkjet printers orcranked out in rolls like a newspaper.

The next step is to print mechanical structures that caninterface with the electronics, like motors or buttons. JohnCanny and his University of California, Berkeley colleaguespropose lling inkjet cartridges with electroactive poly-mers, plastics that contract with an electric charge or gen-erate voltage when exed. What is the rst thing one mightbuild with a desktop factory? How about a copy of itself?

The goal of University of Bath engineer Adrian Bowyer’sRepRap (replicating rapid prototype) project is to builda “universal constructor” that not only manufactures ob-

jects, but actually make copies of itself. Bowyer released

all the blueprints and software code online to accelerateprogress by tapping into the collective intelligence of theopen-source community. Further along in developmentis the Fab@Home project, a collective effort to create a“low cost, hackable rapid prototyper kit.”

Now, having access to the tools of design and fabrica-tion doesn’t instantly make someone a good designeror ne craftsman. In fact , there may be a consumershift from paying for products to paying for plans.Well-known brands could sell new designs that wouldbe manufactured at home or nearby fab labs. Creativetypes would use advanced versions of software like

Google SketchUp to render their own product ideas. Anopen market for user-generated designs and personal-ized versions of commercial products will likely emergeonline, culminating in the personal design and fabrica-tion revolution, where products will be available forsharing like so much online media.

P

b t :F om the

machine shop tothe esktop

Trend 1 d : Acc ss to Tools +Op -Sou c ev ythi g



5

d kt p f t . kt p t .

Desktop Factory’s rapid prototyping printer builds functional models one layer at a time from stan-dard 3D digital les. At $5000, it’s less than one-third of the cost of almost all other 3D printerscurrently on the market. The goal of the company is to “make low-cost high-performance three-dimen-sional printing pervasive in businesses, schools, and homes.”

op -s B . p t .

The next revolution in manufacturing may be biological. In the emerging eld of synthetic biology,genes, proteins, and cells are snapped together like Tinkertoys to build living systems that don’texist in nature. Already, bacteria have been engineered to biologically manufacture precursors forsome expensive pharmaceuticals. Biofuels are next. Eventually, these organisms, developed underthe tenets of open-source science, might be the basis of a distributed manufacturing infrastructureproducing raw materials in beakers and vats.

c t c p . .

A home CNC (computer numerical control) milling machine, the Sears Craftsman Compucarve retailsfor less than $2000. According to the marketing materials, “It allows a novice to make a completeproject without a shop full of tools.” The machine comes with an expandable library of digital designsthat “allow you to achieve professional results regardless of space, time, budget or skill.”

c t . . . /~ t

A basic research project from Carnegie Mellon and Intel, Claytronics—if the technology can bedeveloped—is nothing short of programmable matter. The “clay” in claytronics consists of mounds oftiny microprocessors, called “catoms,” that can communicate and automatically self-assemble by wayof electrostatic forces.

:

B tt d sktop tools fo d sig a d fab icatio a

maki g it so that acc ss to a compl shop full of tools a d

machi s o a fo mal vocatio al ducatio is o lo g ap quisit to maki g cool thi gs.





6

t tt :

F om cent alizep o uction to

a hoc facto ies

Trend 2 d : Acc ss to Tools +eco-Motivatio

Tomorrow’s factory may look very different from the mas-sive, rigid machines familiar to us since the advent of theIndustrial Revolution. Flexible manufacturing technolo-gies on the horizon will shift fabrication from massive andcentralized to lightweight and ad hoc. Historically, build-ing an assembly line to crank out a widget has requireda huge capital investment, and the company has a lotriding on the success of that product. Inventory planningbecomes a magical art: If supply of the product is greaterthan consumer demand, the company takes a direct hit.Supply shortages can also be devastating. At the same

time, consumers are demanding more accountability frommanufacturers. They want to know what materials wentinto their products and their sources, who manufacturedthe products, and the journey the products took fromfactory to corner store.

However, in the near future, rapid manufacturing tech-nologies, personal fabrication, and the networking ofsupply chains into exible “supply webs” will transform theway goods are made. These technological developments,combined with global job shops, enable fast, customized,and often greener production. Moreover, general-purposemanufacturing technologies and desktop factories couldtrigger the rise of microniche production. Diverse com-munities could forego many mass-produced goods forcustom-produced items that meet their speci c needs.

You might think of TechShop as a community manufac-turing facility. Launched in Silicon Valley, TechShop is anopen-access workshop stocked with the most advancedtools for design and fabrication. It’s similar to a gym inthat members pay monthly dues for round-the-clock ac-cess to 3D printers, sewing machines, laser cutters, mill-ing machines, electronics design facilities, and an array oftraditional workshop tools.

“We are makers assembling a community of makers,”TechShop COO Mark Hatch, a former Kinko’s executive,said at IFTF’s 2008 Technology Horizons Spring Exchange.

While many TechShop members are weekend tinkererslearning robotics or sheet metal fabrication, quite a feware entrepreneurs prototyping a product. The manufac-turing tools at TechShop enable them to make proof-of-concept devices without investing in any tools or shopspace. But where does a small business go when it’s timeto scale up—not signi cantly, but a little bit at a time?

China, of course. But to do it right, you need a middle-man like Liam Casey, dubbed “Mr. China” by The AtlanticMonthly. Casey is the founder of PCH International, asupply chain management company that navigates theintricacies of Shenzhen, China’s “factory to the world” fora host of technology companies, from huge rms to smallopen-source operations. A nimble supply web and proxim-ity to exible job shops mean that PCH can take a productfrom a concept all the way to consumer delivery in justeight weeks, with minimal risk to the business owner.

“Everyone talks about Chinese manufacturing and howcheap that is,” Case says. “What few realize is that byconverting manufacturing and shipping to JIT [Just-In-Time] a company never has to store the items it is selling.By reducing the initial cash outlays, a smaller company canafford to make its own hardware and scale up rapidly.”

As he sees it, the big story is that a disruptive supplychain, combined with disruptive manufacturing technol-ogy, leads to “disruptive commerce.”





signals:

P k .p k .

Based in San Francisco, Ponoko is the ultimate short-run job shop. Anyone can submit 3D digitaldesigns—e.g., furniture designs—that the company then manufactures on demand. Their Web platformalso enables individuals to sell their plans and nished products with no upfront costs, no minimumorders, and no required inventory. “Consumers no longer have to accept what they nd on the shelf,”says Ponoko co-founder Derek Elley. “Instead they can have something that’s designed and madeespecially for them, something ‘individualized’ from scratch.”

a c t c p t r c t . .

As manufacturing changes, so does de-manufacturing. The Alameda County Computer Resource

Center (ACCRC) embodies the maker mantra of “Reduce, Reuse, Remake.” The nonpro t acceptsanything that you can plug into a power outlet. If the equipment works or is repairable, they’llrefurbish it and nd a charity, nonpro t, school, or disabled individual who wants it. If it’s dead, theydisassemble it and send the base elements to green recyclers for processing. On Earth Day andother special occasions, makers from around the world are invited to scavenge the ACCRC ware-house for raw materials that are combined and remade into new things. At ACCRC, “obsolescenceis just a lack of imagination.”

a t i t . t.

Ikea’s “some assembly required” furniture has taken off, so why not electronics? Adafruit Industriessells kits for open-source electronics hardware. Reminiscent of the original personal computers thatwere sold as kits, the Adafruit Industries kits range from an external iPod battery pack and rechargerto TV-B-Gone, a prankster’s dream device that turns off any television within 150 feet. The companyis a prime example of how a maker turns prototypes into products while maintaining an open-sourceapproach to intellectual property.

U lik ass mbly li s a d d dicat d facto i s,

job shops abl fast, ibl , a d

customiz d p oductio .



8

Trend 3 d : Platfo ms fo Sociabilitiy +ris of th P of ssio al Amat u

In the last few years, social networking sites have becomethe quintessential services of the Web 2.0 world. Friend-of-a-friend networks like MySpace, Facebook, and Linke-dIn are hotbeds for human-human interaction, connect-ing employers with potential employees, single peoplelooking for each other, bands with their fans, and evenpoliticians with their supporters. Meanwhile, passionatehobbyists and even retired experts in a variety of eldsare blurring the line between professional and amateur.These professional amateurs are tackling problems, creat-ing media, and producing goods that are often superior to

those of accredited experts and big businesses.When professional amateurs are augmented with plat-forms of sociability, the social networks that emergeonline and off become thriving hubs for collaborative re-search and problem solving. Research and developmentmoves outside the traditional laboratory to communitiesand networks where ideation, iteration, and cash rewardsfuel progress. In these communities, one can seek the“wisdom of crowds”: the collective intelligence that isgreater than the sum of its parts.

InnoCentive and Six Sigma are examples of marketplacesfor high-quality collective intelligence. Online services ex-

ist where organizations can offer a bounty on problems inchemistry, engineering, design, math, computer science,physical science, and business. Cash rewards range froma few thousand to one million dollars in what InnoCentivecalls a “global knowledge economy” of open innovation.To keep the crowd wise, both InnoCentive and the par-ticipating company vet problem solvers before providingthem access to the competitions.

Jill Panetta, InnoCentive’s chief scienti c of cer, saysthis R&D community has cracked 30% of the problemsposted on the site, “30% more than would have beensolved using a traditional, in-house approach.”

Yet while InnoCentive and Six Sigma are about linkingindividual experts with problems, other R&D communi-ties are speci cally designed to leverage the collectiveintelligence of non-experts, or rather, those with moredirect experience than formal expertise. At Patients-LikeMe, almost 10,000 people with diseases ranging fromParkinson’s to Multiple Sclerosis to AIDS congregate onthe PatientsLikeMe forums, sharing personal narratives,medical experiences, and treatment advice.

The difference between this site and other online healthforums is that experiential data drives PatientsLikeMe,which has been called by the New York Times “MySpacefor the af icted.” Community members share speci csabout how long symptoms lasted, side effects of newmedications, etc. The data is then presented in aggregateas charts and graphs for patient self-analysis. This ap-proach points toward a shift in how research and devel-opment is done, away from a model where only accred-ited “experts” are welcome to provide and analyze data

and hierarchies are established by the letters after yourname or the number of scienti c publications you haveon your curriculum vitae.

t & :

f om r&d labs

to r&dcommunities





P t p t u b . b - t p . t/P t p t u b

A project of Intel research scientist Eric Paulos, Participatory Urbanism represents a shift in themobile device from communication tool to “networked mobile personal measurement instrument.” Byout tting traditional mobile phones with sensors for air quality, noise pollution, or other environmen-tal factors, citizens are empowered to collect and share high-resolution data about their immediateenvironment in a new form of civic participation.

m d t ’ dna . t .

Dr. Hugh Rienhoff’s young daughter has a genetic syndrome that physicians have been unable todiagnose. So he’s taken matters into his own hands, analyzing his own daughter’s genome and design-

ing a treatment for her. Rienhoff launched My Daughter’s DNA to share what he’s found and encourageothers to do the same. The primary purpose of the site, he says, is to “help the interested communityof geneticists, patients, physicians, scientists, and family members” to understand rare and mysteriousvariations in our own genome.

g l X P . xp .

The mission? Be the rst privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters, andtransmit data back to the Earth. The winner will be rewarded with $20 million. The effort encouragescommunities of “entrepreneurs, engineers, and visionaries” to do what it once took an orchestra ofgovernment agencies, academia, and private sector companies to accomplish.

l m t t . .

Lego’s programmable robot construction kit is a quintessential example of “lead user innovation”driven by a passionate ad hoc R&D community. Weeks after Lego launched Mindstorms, hackersreverse engineered the technology and developed new software and uses for the product. Legoquickly encouraged these hackers and eventually consulted their community while developing theirnext-generation product, Mindstorms NXT.

r s a ch a d d v lopm t is o lo g l gat d to

a lab wh o ly “ p ts” a w lcom . Mak s ach

out to commu iti s a d two ks to id at ,it at , a d solicit f dback.

signals:



0

Trend 4 d : Platfo ms fo Sociabilitiy +Qu st fo Auth ticity

The two-guys-in-a-garage story of invention persists as anarchetype of Silicon Valley mythology. It’s a contemporarymanifestation of the mad scientist holed up in solitude inhis lab, awaiting a great ash of inspiration. But in reality,human interaction fuels innovation. This crosspollinationof ideas will become easier as makers leverage platformsof sociability to connect with one another. The amount oftime we spend online is driving a newfound appreciationfor of ine interaction, too. Real world meet-ups, sharedworkshops, and DIY festivals add a layer of authenticity tovirtual communities that celebrate ingenuity among peers.

Dorkbot is a semi-monthly gathering where engineers,artists, and designers informally present their work,critique each other’s efforts, share technical tips, anddrink lots of beer. Dorkbot was founded several years agoin New York City by Douglas Repetto, a computer musicinstructor at Columbia University, who was searching for“artists, hackers, engineers, activists, and crackpots hack-ing away in the backroom on some obsession.”

“I wanted to create an environment where lots of differ-ent sorts of people could come together and share thoseobsessions,” he says. “There’s something very compellingabout being in the very room where something strange

is happening. You’re not reading about it, it’s not stream-ing video, it’s not a photo slide show. It’s right there infront of you. Something might break. And that’s good, andinvigorating, and exciting.”

Today, more than a dozen cities around the world haveDorkbots. At one San Francisco meeting, high-voltageengineer Greg Leyh, who spends his days working at theStanford Linear Accelerator Center, outlined his after-hours effort to build the Advanced Lightning Facility, apair of 12-story high transformers that spit out 300-footlightning bolts. At another Dorkbot session, Maribeth Back

demonstrated an interactive children’s storybook embed-ded with radio frequency identi cation tags.

“Dorkbot is like informal peer review,” says Dorkbot-SFfounder Karen Marcelo. “The work you present doesn’thave to be nished. It might even just be an idea that youwant feedback on.”

Once you’ve actually built your idea, you might also postit on Instructables.com, a thriving online destination thatembodies the shift from R&D labs to R&D communi-ties. It’s a hub of how-to where passionate hackers and

hobbyists post detailed plans for gizmos ranging from awheelchair for an injured dachshund to a pressurized air-powered bicycle.

A team of MIT grads founded the site to harness the “cre-ative cycles” of tens of thousands of passionate hackersand hobbyists. “If you can amplify the voices of people inthe form of community, they’re really going to share thethings they’re good at,” co-founder Eric Wilhelm said atIFTF’s 2008 Technology Horizons Spring Exchange.

Instructables grew out of Thinkcycle.org, a collaborativesystem they launched as students for tackling tough techproblems in developing nations, from ltering water to

treating cholera. Instructables is Thinkcycle for a wideraudience, people who might get a kick out of constructinga 3D chocolate printer from Legos, an aquarium coffeetable, or a laptop bag made from a discarded wetsuit.

“DIY also means community—you aren’t, in fact, doing itby yourself,” says Dale Dougherty, founder of MAKE andMaker Faire. “By creating something, you join communi-ties of practice: hobbyists, enthusiasts, clubs, whatever.You start sharing ideas, recipes, tools, techniques, andconnecting to people on the basis of what you make.”

t kt :

F om ga ageinvento s to make

meet-ups





T s p .t p .

The Shipyard is a collective compound for makers in Berkeley, California, whose residents buildtheir workshops in shipping containers. They derive much of their power from an innovative solarenergy system of their own design. While the community members pursue a variety of projects, theorganization’s collective focus is on the development of new alternative energy technologies forbuildings and vehicles.

T . .T .

Members of Threadless, a community-centered online apparel store, submit designs for new T-shirts,and the “winners” are printed and sold on the site. The individual creators are paid for the designs

and also receive a gift certi cate. The site is as much about the thriving community around the prod-uct as the product itself.

B m .b .

An annual art event and temporary community, Burning Man takes place in the Black Rock Desert ofNevada. Tens of thousands of people participate in this eight-day “experiment in community, radicalself-expression, and radical self-reliance.” A city is built, celebrated, and then destroyed, with the goalbeing to “leave no trace” behind. No spectators allowed.

Mak s a ’t ti k i g alo i ga ag s, backya ds,

a d bas m ts. Th y’ buildi g commu iti s,

fo mi g two ks, a d m ti g up to collabo ata d c l b at th i c atio s.

signals:



12

Trend 5 d : Qu st fo Auth ticity +ris of th P of ssio al Amat u

We see a growing demand for products and experiencesthat are personalized and authentic. At the same time, therise of the professional amateurs leads to a supply of prod-ucts that meet this demand. Historically, linking niche sell-ers with niche buyers has been challenging. But the Webhas changed that, spawning a grassroots economy whereindividuals and small businesses can design, produce, andmarket goods without the need for big retailers or deep-pocketed middlemen. These new structures for produc-tion, exchange, and value creation form a framework fora grassroots economy. Scale is built from the bottom up

through open-source practices, peer-to-peer exchanges,new models for valuation, and a commons-based approachto commercialism. This level of manufacturer–customerengagement can lead to an authentic, honest relationshipwhere you just don’t buy into a marketing myth about aproduct; you buy into the product itself.

“Products are their own media,” says Douglas Rushkoff,author of Get Back In The Box: Innovation From The In-side Out . “Things communicate better about themselvesthan marketers do. The product has to speak for itself.”

Web site and online community Etsy embodies this kindof authenticity. Think of it as a traditional craft fair, but

virtualized so that anyone can set up a personal store-front and sell goods they make, from hand-woven babyblankets to elegant jewelry fashioned from recycledcomputer parts. With more than 50,000 artisans offering500,000 items to 250,000 registered buyers, Etsy pro-vides sellers with scale—but not at the expense of theirindependence. In November 2007, buyers spent $4.3 mil-lion on Etsy purchases. As with eBay, a growing numberof Etsy sellers make their entire living via the site. Thecompany hosts events, co-working sessions, and work-shops where sellers can hone their craft or learn aboutbusiness strategy. From that perspective, Etsy is as mucha platform for sociability as it is a virtual shopping mall.

In fact, this sense of personal connection between buyersand sellers gives Etsy its authenticity. If you like a particu-lar hand-knitted sweater design but wish it had a smallercollar or came in another color, you can just email thecreator. For example, an IFTF researcher’s wife wanteda quilt made from their son’s baby T-shirts. She found aquilter on Etsy whose work she liked and the two collabo-rated to design the quilt at a cost that was a fraction ofwhat a handmade, designer quilt sells for in a departmentstore. This grassroots marketplace hints at a shift whereauthentic products actually serve as platforms for stories

that the manufacturer and the consumer create together.In the global village, Etsy sellers are the town artisans.

That’s also the philosophy at TCHO, a new chocolatecompany in San Francisco that blends DIY ingenuity,self-taught science, and online community. From hack-ing together a homebrew chocolate lab for $5,000instead of buying a $100,000 “pro” system to tricking outthirty-year-old chocolate factory equipment with mod-ern technology, TCHO embodies a maker mindset thatits founders call “scrappy not crappy.” Founder TimothyChilds’s business plan depends on using the Web totransform the supply chain into a supply loop. TCHO willuse digital video and other media to tell the chocolate’slife story, opening the lines of communication between,say, the Chilean farmer who grew a particular bean andthe customer on another continent. The entire manufac-turing process will be transparent, he explains, from beanto bar. TCHO will be the communication hub betweenthe supplier and the sweet tooth.

“TCHO isn’t just selling chocolate, but rather the wholechocolate experience,” says CEO Louis Rossetto, bestknown as the founder of Wired magazine. “People wanttheir products to tell stories and chocolate is the mediumfor this particular story.”

t:

F om p o uctsto sto ies





a p . p .

Under the tagline of “undependent distribution,” Ampli er is a ful llment house for grassroots Inter-net publishers, from conversational blogs to DIY book authors, who want to launch merchandisingprograms. They print products on demand, from T-shirts to full-color coffee table books, and handleall orders, inventory, ful llment, and accounting. Their pitch is all about a “virtuous circle”: “By reduc-ing noise and increasing the time you have with your audience, we actually can increase your oppor-tunities to create and sell totally new creative works.”

m k s . k .

Maker Shed is the online store spun out of MAKE:and CRAFT magazines. As the magazines grew in

popularity, the publishers realized that many readers wanted to spend more time building projectsthan sourcing parts. Now, the magazines work with individual makers to “kit” their projects and act asa distribution channel for small companies in the kit business, from an LED-augmented Hula Hoop toa programmable processor for homebrew electronics. The Maker Shed also sells specialized tools, acarefully curated selection of books, and offers MAKE:It Workshops where students can gather in thereal world and collaboratively learn how to build, for example, a humanoid robot.

B . b .

eBay continues to sustain broad participation from makers and buyers through a very powerfulinstrument of the grassroots economy: reputation systems. When you buy a custom-made tube am-pli er on eBay, how do you know the transaction won’t end with a sucker’s payoff, in which the sellergets your cash and never sends the item? At eBay, however, buyers rate sellers, and vice versa, sothat every participant in a transaction can be judged by their reputation. The higher your reputation,the better prices you can achieve on your goods.

Mak s a tu i g away f om big tail a d v tu i g out

o th i ow , oft o li , to sha a d s ll goods a d

s vic s i ma k tplac s wh shopp s wa t to k owth p opl a d sto i s b hi d th p oducts.

signals:



14

Trend 6 d : Op -Sou c ev ythi g +Platfo ms fo Sociability

Open source began as a model for software develop-ment in which developers release an application’s codefor distribution and modi cation by the users. The usersthen release their modi cations back into the commons.Much of the Internet as we know it today was built onthat framework and, in many ways, it drove the rapidlytransformative effects of the online world. A secondaryconsequence of the open-source story is that a culturehas emerged that expects that same level of “openness”not only in the bits they use, but also in the stuff they buyor make. Platforms of sociability enable these makers to

share their modi cations, improvements, and even grandfailures with their communities. It’s networked innovationbubbling from the bottom up.

In 2004, MAKE: Magazine contributing editor Mister Ja-lopy wrote the “Maker’s Bill of Rights.” The manifesto out-lined the level of importance DIYers place on such thingsas replaceable batteries, parts lists included with products,and other requirements to make products hackable andrepairable by their owners. The bottom line is, as MisterJalopy wrote, “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.” Whatit means to own something is changing, as more peoplewant the option to customize and personalize their prod-ucts. Yet, technology companies are racing to prevent this,developing digital rights management strategies and othersecurity features to maintain control over a product evenafter the customer has taken it home. Arguably, though,these approaches to secure market-share sti e innovationand lead to stagnation in the marketplace.

In its purest sense, the original concept of open source maynot have broad applications beyond the software runningyour computer, or especially, running on the Web. Still,openness as a concept is moving way beyond software andinto myriad facets of our lives, and it’s not about giving awaythe farm, either. In the near future, open IP and innovation,especially in hardware, may be the best way to do business.

The makers of the Chumby hope this is the case. TheChumby is a wireless Internet device in the form of abeanbag with a touch-screen. It can track stock prices, tellyou the weather, act as a digital picture frame, play music,list incoming email, or cycle through popular YouTube clips.An entirely open-source hardware platform, Chumby runsuser-created and also commercial widget applications.

“In the design of the system, we consider not only open-source software hackers, but also hardware hackers andartists and ‘crafters’—e.g., people who are equally skilled intheir ability and passion to do non-computer things, suchas metalworking, sewing, carpentry, etc.,” says Chumby co-inventor Andrew “bunnie” Huang. Prior to Chumby, Huanggained online notoriety for hacking the Microsoft Xbox.

All of the Chumby design specs, from the beanbag casepatterns to the circuitry, are available online for free. TheChumby of cially launched in Spring 2008, but reviewsare strong and hundreds of applications and hacks arealready available. And with a device like Chumby, onlyusers’ ambitions and skills limit the possibilities of whatthe device can do. Skeptical of its missing keyboard? “Ifyou’re a hacker and don’t mind voiding the warranty, youcan probably nd a way to make a mouse or keyboard

work with a Chumby,” states the company’s Web site.Over the next decade, the most successful products mayremain in a permanent state of beta, open for tweaks,improvements, and unintended uses appearing in theunlikeliest of places. The Open Prosthetics Project is acommunity hoping to spur innovation in the industry byfacilitating a community of lead users “whose contribu-tions are often of a greater value and at a faster pacethan the companies that produce the products they use.”Consumers become co-developers, so long as companiesshare and share alike.

i ’tp t,

’t t:

F om close IPto open innovation





s d a . .

Launched by the founders of the Open Prosthetics Project, the Shared Design Alliance is an ad-vocacy group and platform for opening physical products for modi cation and pushing the designinformation into the public domain. They list the following bene ts of sharing design: It lowers entrybarriers by providing a platform for low-cost experimentation, allows collaboration across boundar-ies, accelerates technical evolution, increases societal wealth, and coordinates efforts to bene tunderserved communities.

T k .t k.

Think of Thinglink as a UPC code for small producers such as artists, designers, makers, and crafters

to share information about the things they make. An individual can create a unique code for any itemand populate a form with information about the object—where the idea originated, the materials andtechniques used, its historical context, etc. You can then download a label for printing or to “tag” youritem virtually. Thinglink can become the storehouse of stories around products, as described earlierin this paper, or the location for open-source information about products. Even the database andproduct code are free and open.

os .t p j t.

Dedicated to “spreading the Open-source idea in the real physical world,” OScar is a German-basedeffort to develop a car following the principles of open source. According to the OScar manifesto,

rst written almost a decade ago, “Building a car … without an engineering center, without a boss,without money, and without borders … but with the help of the collective creativity of the Internetcommunity—that is the meaning of empowerment, the meaning of ‘challenge.’ ” The community ofmore than 100 contributors around the world has a very short list of rules. The rst three: Trust is thebasis for our cooperation, everyone has a voice, and knowledge is free.

What it m a s to ow a c atio is cha gi g

as mo mak s p ct th i ha dwa a d

softwa to mai i b ta, op fo tw aks,imp ov m ts, a d u i t d d us s.

signals:



16

Implications Whether your organization deals in bits or in atoms, the imminent transformation of the way things aredesigned, tested, produced, and distributed will have a profound impact on the way you work. To that end,we’ve identi ed a range of implications spurred by this forecast. Think of these as rules of thumb to help

your organization engage early with the future of making.

f e o t

Research and development becomes easier as networked communities enable spontaneous trials,tests, and feedback. The new tools for rapid manufacturing permit organizations to continuouslyprototype and tweak products. Meanwhile, the new channels of communication with customers/collaborators provide organizations a direct line for input. Products can be released in beta, a termfrom the software industry, where lead users are encouraged to put them through their paces andhelp you uncover and correct mistakes.

n t k y o t

Many of the best ideas may come from unexpected contributors, including those who are so far out-side your organization’s walls that they speak a different language. Develop a community around yourproducts and your brands. Engage with experts and thinkers from a variety of disciplines to providean outside-in perspective on your organization, from how it operates to the products in the pipeline.Invite guest speakers to speak to your team on topics of intellectual or creative interest even if thedirect business applications aren’t immediately apparent. Once you are open to the idea of a net-worked organization, it’s relatively easy to identify and engage with external networks of exceptionalpeople through community R&D platforms such as Instructables, InnoCentive, and NineSigma.

c t t y c t

Organizations must develop skills for engaging, participating, and fostering communities relevant totheir products and services. The rst step is identifying a community to engage with. It’s much easier(and authentic, see below) to nd an existing group of people who share an interest than to startyour own when one (or many) already exists. Identify someone, hopefully internally, who alreadyparticipates in online communities to be your “community manager.” This individual keeps conversa-tions on track and is the liaison between the organization and the community. Eventually, “communitymanagers” will emerge from the community itself. Reward them. Respect them. They are the “truebelievers” in your brand.

c b t t y c t

Real-world gatherings provide an opportunity for organizations to recognize alpha users and developauthentic relationships. Organize your own versions of Maker Faires that harness the creativity ofyour employees or your communities. Makers within your organization are likely doing valuable, inspi-rational, and innovative work that goes completely unrecognized. Internally, you could invite youremployee makers to show their projects and personal innovations both around your products andoutside of your core business. Externally, identify and celebrate the maker spirit through contests,sponsorships of events, and smart ad campaigns that reach lead users of all stripes. Instead of litigat-ing against makers and policing what your customers do with the products they own, future-thinkingorganizations invite makers to the table and reward them for their efforts.



insTiTuTe for The fuTure

r s t s k

Many organizations suffer from “not invented here” syndrome: the rejection of an idea because itoriginated outside. Employees are often rewarded for solving a problem, but not for identifying some-

one else’s solution and integrating it. It makes no sense to reinvent the wheel, except, of course, whenit does. For example, an existing solution may be too expensive or inadequate in some way. Also, theprocess of reinvention itself can reveal new and valuable information or discoveries. Problem solversthink deeply, but solution seekers think broadly. A good organization rewards both.

B a t t

As cyberspace becomes a layer on top of the physical world and we spend more of our lives online,a newfound appreciation emerges for authentic experiences, interactions, and products. This questfor authenticity permeates all aspects of the retail ecology, from manufacturers to customers toconsumers. For example, many purchases will likely be made on the basis of how much the productconforms to the real, or aspirational, self-image of the buyer. Products that enable a consumer tothink, “I see me in you” feel more authentic and, indeed, are authentic. The most direct path to that

sense of authenticity is for the customers to have a hand in the creation or customization of theproduct. That way, they have imbued it with a story and created a personal connection to the item.Not every sweater can be hand-knit by your grandmother, but almost every product can tell a storyof some kind.

B Q t T p t

As people’s curiosity and knowledge about how things are made increases, they’ll seek out moreinformation about the products they buy. Where were the materials sourced? How green were thefactories? Pervasive computing technologies will enable products to document their own states,locations, and movements, to tell their own stories. For organizations, this new realm of visible datawill be useful in understanding their own products’ lifecycles. But for customers and users, this datais just more “news you can use” when making choices in the marketplace. Don’t brag or you’ll be

called on it. The better approach is to be quietly transparent by sharing what you know, because ifyou don’t make it transparent, someone else will.

e t s op

Open-source software usually refers to “source code under a license (or arrangement such as thepublic domain) that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistributeit in modi ed or unmodi ed form.” In recent years, the open-source mindset has been applied tophysical objects, too. Open-source hardware might include circuit diagrams, software that is useraccessible, cases that can be opened up with a standard screwdriver, or anything else that invites theowner to roll up her sleeves and look under the hood. This kind of openness encourages lead user in-novation and peer production, the coordinated efforts of large numbers of creative people. The endresult is usually a better mousetrap (or computer mouse). The MAKE: Magazine motto is, “If you can’t

open it, you don’t own it.” Successful organizations will embrace open-source culture in an authentic,well-considered way that’s good for both the customers and for the bottom line.

Documents

Future of Making