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<p>Copyright © 2014 by Mark Hatch. All rights reserved. Except as permitted</p><p>under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication</p><p>may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in</p><p>a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the</p><p>publisher.</p><p>ISBN: 978-0-07-182113-1</p><p>MHID: 0-07-182113-9</p><p>The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title:</p><p>ISBN: 978-0-07-182112-4, MHID: 0-07-182112-0.</p><p>E-book conversion by codeMantra</p><p>Version 2.0</p><p>All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a</p><p>trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use</p><p>names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark</p><p>owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such</p><p>designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps.</p><p>McGraw-Hill Education eBooks are available at special quantity discounts</p><p>to use as premiums and sales promotions or for use in corporate training</p><p>programs. To contact a representative please visit the Contact Us page at</p><p>www.mhprofessional.com.</p><p>TERMS OF USE</p><p>This is a copyrighted work and McGraw-Hill Education and its licensors</p><p>reserve all rights in and to the work. Use of this work is subject to these</p><p>terms. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the right to</p><p>store and retrieve one copy of the work, you may not decompile,</p><p>disassemble, reverse engineer, reproduce, modify, create derivative works</p><p>based upon, transmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish or sublicense the</p><p>work or any part of it without McGraw-Hill Education’s prior consent. You</p><p>may use the work for your own noncommercial and personal use; any other</p><p>use of the work is strictly prohibited. Your right to use the work may be</p><p>terminated if you fail to comply with these terms.</p><p>THE WORK IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” McGRAW-HILL EDUCATION</p><p>AND ITS LICENSORS MAKE NO GUARANTEES OR WARRANTIES</p><p>http://www.mhprofessional.com/</p><p>AS TO THE ACCURACY, ADEQUACY OR COMPLETENESS OF OR</p><p>RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED FROM USING THE WORK,</p><p>INCLUDING ANY INFORMATION THAT CAN BE ACCESSED</p><p>THROUGH THE WORK VIA HYPERLINK OR OTHERWISE, AND</p><p>EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,</p><p>INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF</p><p>MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.</p><p>McGraw-Hill Education and its licensors do not warrant or guarantee that</p><p>the functions contained in the work will meet your requirements or that its</p><p>operation will be uninterrupted or error free. Neither McGraw-Hill</p><p>Education nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any</p><p>inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any</p><p>damages resulting therefrom. McGraw-Hill Education has no responsibility</p><p>for the content of any information accessed through the work. Under no</p><p>circumstances shall McGraw-Hill Education and/or its licensors be liable</p><p>for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar</p><p>damages that result from the use of or inability to use the work, even if any</p><p>of them has been advised of the possibility of such damages. This limitation</p><p>of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim</p><p>or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise.</p><p>Contents</p><p>Acknowledgments</p><p>Maker Movement Manifesto (Short Version)</p><p>Introduction</p><p>1. Maker Movement Manifesto</p><p>2. Free Innovation!</p><p>3. Communities of Practice</p><p>4. Knowledge, Learning, Control, and Intelligence</p><p>5. Fueling Innovation</p><p>6. Democratization of Tools and Information</p><p>7. Rise of the Pro-Am</p><p>8. Distributed and Flexible Manufacturing</p><p>9. Accelerating Innovation</p><p>10. Changing through Participation</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>Notes</p><p>Index</p><p>Acknowledgments</p><p>First to Jim Newton, thank you for inviting me to join you on this amazing</p><p>adventure. Then to our biggest partners: Autodesk, Ford, DARPA, the VA,</p><p>Lowe’s, and GE, thank you for believing. This includes a large part of</p><p>Autodesk’s executive team, Carl Bass, Jeff Kowalski, Chris Bradshaw,</p><p>Amar Hanspal, Samir Hanna, Mark Hawkins, “Buzz” Kross, and Steve</p><p>Blum. Others at Autodesk have been instrumental, including Sean James,</p><p>Josh Ewing, Jon Pitman, Jonathan Knowles, Maurice Conti, Gonzalo</p><p>Martinez, Tom Wujec, Jesse Au, Mike Guyer, Mary Hope McQuiston, and,</p><p>of course, Brian Pene. All of them have helped the Maker Movement,</p><p>TechShop, and I in specific ways. Thank you also to the chain of folks that</p><p>got us to Autodesk, Paul Saffo and Chuck House.</p><p>To Ford and its employees, including Bill Ford III, Bill Coughlin,</p><p>Charles Ericson, Venkatesh Prasad, Paul Mascarenas, Randal Visintainer,</p><p>Alan Hall, John Ellis, David Evans, T.J. Giuli, and Janet Wilson, I express</p><p>my appreciation. Ford helped to validate our model and through it gave a</p><p>great boost to the movement.</p><p>DARPA and the VA have been great partners, already bringing</p><p>TechShop to Pittsburgh to thousands of veterans across the United States.</p><p>You know who you are.</p><p>The Lowe’s team has leaned into this area with great enthusiasm. To</p><p>the team including Jay Rebello, Jim Piazza, Chris Stigliano, and Jonathan</p><p>Luster—you made our pilot outside of Austin, Texas, a reality . . . an</p><p>amazing reality actually. When giving tours of our space there, I say, “And</p><p>on the other side of this door is our 110,000-square-foot retail space</p><p>operated by our partner Lowe’s. If you need anything, that is the best place</p><p>to start.”</p><p>Thank you to our staff, current, former, and future. You make this</p><p>possible. I will call out Robert Thomas (a cofounder), Sesame Mish, Dan</p><p>Woods (a cofounder of Make: magazine and this whole movement), Carrie</p><p>Motamedi, Joe Menard, Dan Gonzales, Abe Downey, Derek Yu, Mark</p><p>Dehner, Scott Saxon, Will Brick, Vance Hatch, Mike Catterlin, Paul</p><p>Duggan, Jim Robinson, Rick Taylor, Clay Lambert, Matt Verlinich, Terry</p><p>Sandin, Tackett Austin, Les Giles, Russ Stanphill, Cadence Shae, Laurie</p><p>Connolly, Curtis C, Centa Schumacher, Denney Cole, Parts, Noah Chittim,</p><p>Carmen Dalalo, Patrick Taylor, Myles Cunningham, Christina DeAngelo,</p><p>Christopher Gangai, Joshua Handel, Michelle La Chance, Justin Leathers,</p><p>Marie Lo, Jessica Marzetta, Thomas McIntosh, Gregori Niculitcheff, Chris</p><p>Sasek, Robert Slack, Brian Ward, Rory Ward, Jennifer Benitez, Michael</p><p>Budner, Emily Crocker, Cody Culbertson, Blain Dehmlow, Daniel Garcia,</p><p>Hohammed Ghaymouni, Hassam Samimifar, Aaron Haldiman, Jarod Holtz,</p><p>Angie Hsu, James Irmiger, Cory Jarman, Zachary Johnson, Ryan Lambert,</p><p>Conor Landenberger, Athony Litwak, Ivan Lopez, Juan Mantez, Sean</p><p>McBride, Kyle Moore, Claude Noriega, Mel Olivares, Gustavo Pastre,</p><p>Violet Riggs, Alberto Salinas, Matthew Schutte, Ryan Spurlock, Elle</p><p>Stapleton, Laura Stevenson, Matthew Stollenwerk, Ryan Acks, Justin Bell,</p><p>Andrew Brandt, Raphael Colet, Eva Cooper, Karen Davis, J Duclayan,</p><p>Robert Hanson, Laura Henry, Colin Jaramillo, Kacey Kvamme, Erik</p><p>Ludwig, Bradley Martinson, Cody McCabe, Eric Munoz, Moraia Norman,</p><p>Mike O’Connell, Michelle Romero, Ian Thorp, Nicolas Valverde, Andrew</p><p>Wong, Scott Berels, Jason Burton, Jodi Burton, Carly DeCocker, Lesley</p><p>DiPiazza, Jamie Goforth, Aaron Keast, Taylor Kurrle, Steven Kuypers,</p><p>Joshua Mathieu, Neill Odenwald, Andrea Oleniczak, Faith Olson, Rebekka</p><p>Parker, Shawn Simone, Elizabeth Teifer, Cristopher Bessent, Brittnie Dilley,</p><p>Kathryn Lynn Hange, Carl Johnson, Sara Kali, Jessica Renee Kliewer,</p><p>Christopher Mahler, Christian Manrodt, Karen Nallie, Logan Pelafigue,</p><p>Richard Simmons, Bess Siritanapivat, Samuel Spetalnick, Erik Withers,</p><p>Alixis Rosa Caldero, Gabriel Cottrell, Timonth Currence, Kathryn Kelly,</p><p>Joseph Gies, Cheyenne Grimes, Andrew Leer, Gadsen Merrill, Lucas Nene,</p><p>Chloe Newman, Anthony Olivieri, Jordan Patton, Kathryn Rose, Elizabeth</p><p>Solomon, Toyer Alexander, David White.</p><p>Designer extraordinaire Nambi Gardner and her cohorts Laura</p><p>Cresciamano and Brenden Mendoza, helped make the San Francisco</p><p>location and then the follow-on locations wonderful. Fellow Green Beret</p><p>and general contractor Bill Lloyd, along with his wife Maria and sons Nick,</p><p>Tristan, and Marcus,</p><p>of weeks. Print your</p><p>blister pack card on a high-quality color printer at a copy center such as</p><p>FedEx Kinko’s. Use a vacuum former and a vinyl welder to create a</p><p>package, and start peddling.</p><p>For just a few hundred dollars and your time and creativity, you can</p><p>now create a production prototype that, with a little finishing work, is sales</p><p>ready. Ten years ago it would have cost tens of thousands of dollars and</p><p>taken six months to get to the same place. And you still wouldn’t have a</p><p>package.</p><p>IT’S THE TOOLS</p><p>When Karl Marx wrote about labor and capital, capital (or the tools of</p><p>production) was much more valuable than labor. Capital was also scarcer. In</p><p>a mass-customized society with computer-controlled production—or with</p><p>access to low-cost, short-run tools—we enter a new era in which the tools</p><p>of production are cheap enough that labor can, for the first time, buy or rent</p><p>capital as needed. This is revolutionary. It flips Marxism on its head.</p><p>Capital is rented as needed, not labor.</p><p>The counterrevolution has begun. Low-cost capital, micro-capital, and</p><p>free innovation are remaking our world.</p><p>OK, so labor can’t compete with an oil company, but large segments of</p><p>the economy are going to continue to give way to the advancement and cost</p><p>reductions associated with tools, information, and resources.</p><p>OUTSOURCE, INSOURCE, AND RESOURCE</p><p>EVERYTHING</p><p>On outsourcing. Some years ago I needed a couple of websites translated</p><p>into French and German. I reached for my Rolodex (this was more than 10</p><p>years ago) and used my old network to find a high-quality firm to do the</p><p>work. It bid $49,000 with a three-month turnaround, provided we gave it a</p><p>finished (static) site to code to. I then searched the Internet and used a</p><p>couple of freelance auction sites to see what I might find for less. I went</p><p>with a French firm, one of the 90 firms to bid. It had done work for IBM,</p><p>Microsoft, and a bunch of other large global firms. It translated the site for</p><p>$3,200 and finished in three weeks while using our live site (which changed</p><p>daily) as the target. Hello: a greater than 90 percent savings and in one-third</p><p>of the time.</p><p>A friend of mine recently had a custom human resources information</p><p>system (HRIS) built in India for $12,000. He is reselling it to his clients as a</p><p>“software as a service” (SaaS) product, in which one rents access to the</p><p>software on a per-seat basis by the month. He hosts it on Amazon.com’s</p><p>servers, thereby renting computer capacity when he needs it and avoiding</p><p>the costs of buying, maintaining, and managing servers. In contrast, I spent</p><p>$60,000 a few years ago just to implement an HRIS SaaS solution at a small</p><p>company, and it didn’t work very well. He spent less than 25 percent of</p><p>what I did, and he owns the code. No, these will not compete with SAP</p><p>business management solutions, but a small firm can’t afford or manage the</p><p>big packages anyway.</p><p>Today, there are entire enterprise resource planning (ERP) suites being</p><p>built in the open source community. You can deploy all the software you</p><p>need to run a decent-sized company without having to pay license fees, and</p><p>you can rent the servers to run it on. During the dot-com craze, I worked for</p><p>a firm that spent $30 million on web servers and shut them down well</p><p>before they were amortized. Today, start-ups rent.</p><p>Don’t build the back office; outsource it. There are a couple of firms</p><p>that have sprung up over the last couple of years (Accelcia or Corfino) that</p><p>will completely operate your financials and back office, accounts payable,</p><p>accounts receivable, and non-phone-based customer service and become a</p><p>virtual CFO for you. Some even produce Sarbanes-compliant financials. I</p><p>use one of these firms instead of a part-time bookkeeper, or a full-time</p><p>CFO, because they are cheaper, better, and faster.</p><p>On insourcing. At another start-up I worked with, we hired</p><p>programmers across the United States and left them where they were. We</p><p>saved relocation, office, and computer hardware costs. They provided their</p><p>own computers, Internet access, and (today) the software would have been</p><p>free.</p><p>I managed my entire team over chat, instant messaging, and cell</p><p>phones. We had about 12 employees spread across five states. The ones</p><p>who lived in California I met at Starbucks for their hiring interviews. We</p><p>hired all but the founders and the CEO over the Internet or at coffee shops.</p><p>We worked for months without an office. In today’s environment, I most</p><p>likely wouldn’t have rented an office at all.</p><p>Similar to the days when a journeyman would show up with his own</p><p>tools in tow, in today’s start-up environment, you can expect members of</p><p>your management team to work virtually out of their homes and provide</p><p>their own cell phones and computers. The tools just look different. They</p><p>include a spare bedroom, a coffee shop for meetings, a phone, and a</p><p>portable computer. This is insourcing. It drives down the cost of innovation.</p><p>Sure, once you are up and running, the company will take over many of</p><p>these costs, but the critical phase is at the beginning. Lowering the cost of</p><p>innovation isn’t the only thing; it’s everything. Without it, almost nothing</p><p>happens.</p><p>On resourcing. The key thing here is that the costs of resources for a</p><p>start-up are falling. Cheap computers, outsourced services, outsourced</p><p>infrastructure, and even outsourced design, production, and manufacturing</p><p>have never been cheaper.</p><p>As confirmation, you might expect to see the development of</p><p>microventure capital firms or the emergence of a new type of professional,</p><p>angel, incubator service. Well, you would be right. There are incubator</p><p>services today that will start you on your Web 2.0 or Internet company</p><p>(where these trends are the most pronounced) by taking a small piece of</p><p>ownership in your company and giving you $25,000 to $100,000 to get</p><p>started. Most of the companies fail (fail fast), but the ones that have worked</p><p>have worked well. These new companies have a low cost to start up and an</p><p>explosive growth path.</p><p>FAIL FAST</p><p>“Patrick,” I asked, “How would you describe yourself?”</p><p>“Hmm,” Patrick responded. “A failed entrepreneur.”</p><p>“How so?” I wanted to know more.</p><p>Patrick explained that in early 2010 he was on his fourth start-up of the</p><p>year. What he didn’t tell me was that he had tried something like six ideas</p><p>the year before—I got that information from one of his friends. I had gotten</p><p>to know Pat over the previous couple of weeks because he was taking up</p><p>more and more time on one of our CNC woodworking machines called a</p><p>ShopBot (great company, great machine, by the way). We had come to an</p><p>agreement to help him build 1,000 units in our off hours and help him with</p><p>the next 1,000 units before graduating him to a local prototype shop that</p><p>could handle his volume. In other words, he had gone through 10 start-ups</p><p>in the last year and a half. Wow. That’s nine failures and one emerging</p><p>success. By weighted average, he was right.</p><p>Patrick had come to TechShop six weeks earlier and asked one of our</p><p>Dream Consultants (DCs) what classes he needed to take to learn how to</p><p>use the tools he needed to create a bamboo-based, book-bound iPad case.</p><p>This was just before the iPad came out. He proceeded to take the few</p><p>classes he needed, started to learn the basics of the design software, and</p><p>leveraged our community and staff to get the design just right. He then</p><p>produced a few dozen prototypes, created a website, and just before the</p><p>iPad went on sale, he hired some people through a web-based freelance</p><p>workplace to distribute flyers to all the Apple fans waiting in line at Apple</p><p>stores in the major cities. His first sales started to come in through this great</p><p>little guerilla campaign. Even better, a couple of blog writers were in those</p><p>lines. After one of them got a bamboo iPad case, he described it as the</p><p>Rolls-Royce of iPad cases.</p><p>Within the next 24 hours, Patrick’s team was inundated with 1,000</p><p>orders. At $60 apiece and with the other orders having already been</p><p>received, the team was sitting on $80,000-plus worth of orders. Not bad for</p><p>a couple of months’</p><p>work.</p><p>About that time, I got to know Patrick. We try to help small</p><p>entrepreneurs with prototypes and short runs—but 1,000 units of a large</p><p>case is really pushing the limits of short runs.</p><p>Then The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW.com) ran an article on its</p><p>home page about Patrick’s case. You have to remember that back when the</p><p>iPad first came out there was a lot of hype. If you wanted one, you really</p><p>needed to get in line at Apple and spend the night or at least a good couple</p><p>of hours waiting in line. The only people who had iPads in the first few</p><p>weeks were Apple fanboys (and girls).</p><p>These fanboys start their day on two websites: Apple’s and TUAW’s.</p><p>You get only official news and updates on the Apple website, so most of</p><p>them actually start the day at TUAW. And Patrick’s iPad case, the</p><p>DODOcase, was featured as one of the best made. Thousands of orders</p><p>poured in.</p><p>That’s about the time that I asked Patrick how he would describe</p><p>himself. He was standing by the ShopBot supervising another 16 pieces</p><p>being milled out. Given that this was his tenth or eleventh company or</p><p>product idea in the previous couple of years, I think, in retrospect, he was</p><p>being pretty fair. But he had a tiger by the tail.</p><p>DODOcase received $1 million in orders in its first 90 days. It did</p><p>about $3 million that year and was on a $10 million run rate in the second</p><p>year. I have no idea how it did in the third year, but it had hired 40</p><p>employees, saved a bookbindery in the San Francisco area, and started to</p><p>show up in high-end retailers like Nordstrom. Amazingly, it also counted</p><p>the president of the United States, Barack Obama, as a customer. Not bad</p><p>for a “failed” entrepreneur.</p><p>A local venture capitalist once asked me how failed entrepreneurial</p><p>projects impact us. In the venture capitalists’ world, most projects “fail,”</p><p>and the company, its staff, and its founders all go away. Somehow he</p><p>thought we would see the same kind of churn that they did. I was pretty put</p><p>off by the question, so I told him that, unlike the venture capital world, our</p><p>members didn’t fail. At least not in the same catastrophic way. And frankly,</p><p>by his definition, they don’t. Our members are figuring out what works for</p><p>their product, themselves, and their lives. When you only spend a few</p><p>hundred dollars to “fail,” it’s really just a cheap education and a step toward</p><p>success. Do that a dozen times, and you will likely move out of education</p><p>mode into that of owning a company.</p><p>When one spends $100 million on some wild venture capital deal and it</p><p>doesn’t work, that is a spectacular failure that the venture capitalist (VC)</p><p>has to write off. The founders of that spectacular failure, however, may just</p><p>consider it an expensive education paid for by a venture capital firm. In our</p><p>environment, rapid iteration (failure) is merely a means to an end, not an</p><p>end in itself. If the VCs actually invested in founders rather than the firms</p><p>the founders were starting, and then let the founders iterate a few times on</p><p>wildly different ideas, neither the VCs nor the founders would “fail” as</p><p>much either.</p><p>What this means is that the VC has a system where big failures are the</p><p>norm. “Big” as in $500,000 or more. Most of them will not even talk to you</p><p>unless they can give you $1 to $5 million. So I don’t see failure as needing</p><p>to be the norm; I see learning as the norm. And when “failure” only costs a</p><p>few hundred or a few thousand dollars, it isn’t really failure, it is learning</p><p>cheaply.</p><p>FREE INNOVATION</p><p>Tim Jahnigen was one of the first entrepreneurs I met at TechShop. He was</p><p>mostly working on this weird infrared pet-warming device consisting of</p><p>two big panels with coils to produce infrared heat rays to warm an animal</p><p>as it came out of surgery. He told me how veterinarians used wet blankets</p><p>heated up in a microwave to help warm animals coming out of surgery. And</p><p>he described how sometimes the blankets were too hot and burned the pet,</p><p>or how, if an attendant got distracted, all the heat would dissipate from the</p><p>towel and actually start to cool the pet.</p><p>Tim was sure that infrared panels with a timer could do a much better</p><p>job. He said that he had come up with this idea a few years earlier and had</p><p>gone to a design and prototype shop to get a bid. The firm wanted $100,000</p><p>to do the development and prototype. He didn’t have that kind of money to</p><p>spend on a prototype, so he came to TechShop.</p><p>I asked Tim about his background.</p><p>“I’m in the music industry,” he said. “I’m a roadie for Sting, and I</p><p>produce shows and write music for other musicians.” I was stunned. A self-</p><p>professed professional roadie working on a medical device?</p><p>“What is it going to cost you to get to a functional proto-type?” I asked.</p><p>“Actually, I’m in short-run production now,” he replied. “And it only</p><p>cost me three grand to get started. I can afford three grand,” he added.</p><p>From a macroeconomic perspective what just happened here is this:</p><p>Tim, the roadie, was able to use his personal “disposable income” to</p><p>innovate a new medical device category. At $100,000, he would have</p><p>needed investment income, angel funds, VC funds, bank loans, or other</p><p>forms of capital. But what he did was shift some of his spending, likely</p><p>from going to see a concert or taking an international flight to catch a rock</p><p>band performance, and used it to innovate instead.</p><p>If one uses disposable income to innovate, there is no economic cost.</p><p>No investment committee, no stage-gated innovation process, no business</p><p>plan competition, no incubator review committee, no venture capitalist, PE</p><p>firm, or SBA loan committee. It’s just a personal decision to buy some</p><p>materials, learn how to make something, and then spend the time building</p><p>it. From an economic perspective, this innovation is free. What was</p><p>originally going to be leisure spending has turned into innovation spending.</p><p>Tim succeeded. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) uses his</p><p>animal-warming device, and it is in use around the world. Tim the roadie</p><p>became a successful healthcare entrepreneur—and then he tackled world</p><p>peace.</p><p>Really.</p><p>I didn’t know it when I talked to Tim that day, but he was also trying to</p><p>figure out how to make an indestructible soccer ball. On one of his music</p><p>tours he had seen children using trash for a soccer ball. When he asked</p><p>them why they didn’t have a real ball, they told him that the balls fall apart</p><p>quickly and there are no replacements.</p><p>His next idea was that soccer, a global game, could be used in conflict</p><p>areas to assist in getting children in conflict zones to play together across</p><p>political, social, and ethnic divides. Doing so could potentially plant the</p><p>seeds for peace across a new generation.</p><p>After he had had some success with the infrared pet warming device,</p><p>Tim found a material that would do the trick for the soccer ball project. The</p><p>ball is made with a new foam material like the stuff used to make Crocs</p><p>shoes. But Tim thought he would need $300,000 to develop the product. It</p><p>turned out he only needed $30,000. He described his dilemma to Sting (yes,</p><p>the musician) over breakfast one day, and Sting agreed to fund the research.</p><p>Sting’s disposable income is a little larger than most people’s.</p><p>One World Futbol Project is now on track to distribute 1.5 million</p><p>soccer balls around the globe with the help of Chevrolet and others.</p><p>IMPLICATIONS</p><p>The information, tools, and resources needed to innovate have never been</p><p>cheaper or easier to access. When the cost to innovate goes from being a</p><p>luxury or something that only “capitalists” and venture capital firms can</p><p>afford to an opportunity that is well within the disposable income of the</p><p>middle class, then we should expect to see an eruption of innovative</p><p>products and services as never seen before. When we move people out of</p><p>retirement and into innovation experiments because it is more fun or maybe</p><p>even cheaper than a golf habit, or we leverage people’s “spare time,” they</p><p>advance the science of diamond deposition.</p><p>When we have spaces that allow people to explore a dozen ideas in</p><p>months for a few thousand dollars,</p><p>they eventually find an idea worth</p><p>millions and then create and save jobs.</p><p>Or we provide the platform needed for musicians to explore their inner</p><p>maker instincts to create medical devices or develop products and concepts</p><p>that improve the lives of the least fortunate among us—and do it with</p><p>“disposable” income.</p><p>I love that word, disposable. My thesaurus describes it as “throwaway.”</p><p>Throwaway income. Frappuccino income, golf, travel, cruise ship money. A</p><p>little money, time, effort, trial, failure, and then success that changes the</p><p>world is now within the reach of the middle class.</p><p>These truly are exciting times, and the gale force winds of “creative</p><p>destruction” have begun to blow more strongly than even Joseph</p><p>Schumpeter, who coined that phrase, ever imagined.</p><p>3</p><p>Communities of Practice</p><p>Naganand Murty was sitting at one of our tables in Menlo Park working on</p><p>a phase-changing polymer technology. As part of a class at Stanford’s</p><p>d.school (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design), Naganand, Jane Chen, and</p><p>their team had identified a problem they thought they could tackle. Millions</p><p>of children die each year in the developing world because they are born too</p><p>early and don’t have access to a life-saving incubator. One of the reasons is</p><p>that incubators cost upwards of $20,000, even in the developing world.</p><p>Another reason is that many villages are simply too far away from a</p><p>hospital.</p><p>Through his engineering training, Naganand knew that there were</p><p>materials that could be designed to retain heat for a long time, could be</p><p>designed such that they would tend toward staying within a particular</p><p>temperature range, and could be developed cheaply.</p><p>As part of the d.school, he had access to sewing machines, but the team</p><p>was up against some deadlines and needed more than what was available at</p><p>the school. So he joined TechShop.</p><p>Here was a person trying to save babies in the third world. Our</p><p>community was pretty interested in what he was doing. And that is where</p><p>the power of the community comes in. At some point in the development of</p><p>the infant warmer, a polymer chemist with years of experience introduced</p><p>himself to Naganand and over a short time helped him to redevelop the core</p><p>chemistry to extend its use.</p><p>The largest untapped resource on the planet is the spare time, creativity,</p><p>and disposable income of the “creative class.” As enumerated in Richard</p><p>Florida’s instant classic The Rise of the Creative Class, there are 40 million</p><p>Americans in the creative class. They represent 50 percent of those</p><p>employed and control $474 billion in disposable income (in 2010). This</p><p>“class” is an amalgamation of engineers, artists, lawyers, programmers,</p><p>designers, and others who have the educational or professional propensity</p><p>to “create.” They tend to congregate in “creative cities” that Dr. Florida has</p><p>rank ordered. This has created a nice consulting practice around helping</p><p>municipalities do a better job in developing programs and incentives to</p><p>retain and attract this group of people. The cities at the top of the list are</p><p>fairly obvious: San Francisco, Austin, and Boston.</p><p>The key questions with regard to this group within the context of this</p><p>book are these: What is the creative class doing to help drive the coming</p><p>innovation boom? What are the current patterns of interaction we are</p><p>seeing? And, most important, how can we support and encourage the</p><p>development of robust creative networks and systems?</p><p>First, their day jobs, if they still have them, are likely to be creative by</p><p>their definition. They may not be focused on breakthroughs, but this group</p><p>is focused on pushing current products and services, refining them,</p><p>positioning them, and delivering them. These people are on the front lines</p><p>of the economy, working to make life happen. Many are focused on making</p><p>it better, faster, and cheaper. That is what work is about. In a competitive</p><p>economy, few get to rest on last year’s accomplishments for long. They may</p><p>be attorneys, analysts, or, more obviously, artists and engineers, but the</p><p>nature of their training and roles in the economy is about creating</p><p>something, whether it is a great legal brief, fabulous advertising copy, or the</p><p>left-turn blinker on next year’s pickup truck. I’m particularly interested in</p><p>their “spare time,” whether it’s actually spare time or, having been recently</p><p>laid off, between-jobs “spare time.”</p><p>SPARE TIME</p><p>I recently gave a tour of one of our spaces. In addition to seeing the tools,</p><p>my guest wanted to meet a few of the members. So we got to do one of my</p><p>favorite things, namely, wander around the shop asking people what they</p><p>are making. Stopping at a worktable, we spoke with a thirty-something</p><p>young woman who was working with felt and what turned out to be a laser</p><p>jig.</p><p>“What are you making?” I asked.</p><p>“Oh,” she replied, “These are high-end, designer iPhone covers for my</p><p>female friends.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Yeah, I don’t like the covers I find at the stores. They’re too</p><p>masculine, made of plastic, and too sterile for my tastes. So I’ve found this</p><p>beautiful red and black felt made with organic dyes that I’m cutting on the</p><p>laser cutter and then embellishing with various designs. My girlfriends love</p><p>them; I’ve started to sell them at some nice boutiques in San Francisco.”</p><p>“They’re gorgeous. What’s your background? Have you ever done this</p><p>before?” I asked.</p><p>“Thank you,” she said. “I’m working on a jig to try to make it easier</p><p>and faster to make them. And no, I’ve never done anything like this before.</p><p>I was recently laid off from an analysis job where I studied and reported on</p><p>commercial real estate for a large independent rating agency. I have two</p><p>master’s degrees in business and government but haven’t been able to find a</p><p>job.” She smiled, adding, “I’ve taken a couple of laser cutter classes,</p><p>become a member, and have started to sell iPhone covers as a way to make</p><p>some money on the side.”</p><p>We wished her luck with the iPhone covers and moved on.</p><p>I then talked to my guest about the Creative Class as we walked to the</p><p>back of the shop where a young man was running the ShopBot, a CNC</p><p>woodworking machine. This machine can cut extremely elaborate patterns</p><p>into four-by eight-foot sheets of wood up to five inches thick, and it’s</p><p>attached to a computer where one creates the elaborate designs. You see</p><p>them primarily in high-end cabinet shops.</p><p>“Hi, do you mind if we ask what you are making?”</p><p>He was working with a very large sheet of stunningly beautiful Plyboo</p><p>that was lying on the bed of the machine. Plyboo is a green-friendly</p><p>material made out of bamboo, a rapid-growth hardwood that is more</p><p>sustainable and “greener” than many woods. It is also beautiful.</p><p>“Sure. I’m making Plyboo boxes,” the young man replied. “You can see</p><p>my design here.” He pulled up a 3D model on the computer that was</p><p>controlling the cutting.</p><p>“Very nice,” I said. “You’re making a lot of them.” Around 30 box tops</p><p>were being cut out by the machine as we were watching.</p><p>“Yes, I’m working on a 1,000 unit lot right now.”</p><p>“1,000?” my guest asked.</p><p>“Yes. I lost my job a couple of months ago as a lighting engineer, so</p><p>while I’m looking for a new job, I decided to take a couple of classes and</p><p>learn how to use this machine. I designed these boxes and sold my first</p><p>batch to a chain. They liked them and ordered 1,000 at 16 bucks each.”</p><p>Here was a random sampling of TechShop members, both of whom</p><p>were unemployed creative class members launching their own jobs. Both of</p><p>them had leveraged their familiarity with computer tools to expand their</p><p>experience base and, by using the power of computer-controlled machines</p><p>to perfectly replicate their designs, had begun to supplement or replace their</p><p>previous job income.</p><p>Another one of my favorite stories is that of Karen Styles, owner of</p><p>Karetsticks.com. When Karen’s husband retired, Karen wanted to be able to</p><p>work from home rather than be away from the house 40 hours a week. An</p><p>avid knitter, she decided that what the world needed was bamboo needle</p><p>gauges.</p><p>Pause for a moment. Chris Anderson, Wired magazine’s former</p><p>chief</p><p>editor, wrote The Long Tail, where he describes the emergence of small,</p><p>niche markets that are being enabled by the Internet, search engines, and</p><p>eBay-like retailers. This is important to think about when you read stories</p><p>like Karen’s.</p><p>Karen believed that if she could make these bamboo needle gauges, she</p><p>could sell them on the Internet. So she started to look into how to make</p><p>short runs of them. She looked at woodworking tools, outsourcing, and</p><p>other options and came up blank. She discovered laser cutters and felt that</p><p>they were the perfect tool for making the needle gauges, as she could cut</p><p>and etch them in one pass. She could design them in a simple graphics</p><p>program and finish them with simple tole-painted designs and varnish.</p><p>Perfect—except the laser cutter cost $25,000.</p><p>Karen put her dream of working from home on the shelf for a few</p><p>months. Eventually, she found us, a place where she could access the laser</p><p>cutter for a $100-a-month membership fee. She joined, took a few classes,</p><p>and launched her part-time business. Within months, she was driving across</p><p>the Bay two or three times a week to try to keep up with all her orders.</p><p>Within the year, she had quit her job as a program analyst at a major</p><p>software company, bought her own laser cutter, and was working a thriving</p><p>U.S.-based manufacturing business out of her garage. Karen launched her</p><p>new business in her spare time. She used her disposable income to create a</p><p>new market for a new product. She did it by leveraging her computer skills,</p><p>a couple of new classes, and computer-controlled manufacturing machines.</p><p>Her investment to get started was a few hundred dollars.</p><p>THE NEW OFFICE</p><p>Coworking spaces are the new office, the new community. The best place to</p><p>work these days is not at work. It’s not at home, either. There has been an</p><p>explosion in telecommuting over the last few decades, and its benefits and</p><p>pitfalls are well documented. One of the features of the home office is its</p><p>isolation. It can be incredibly productive. It can also be stifling.</p><p>The new arrangement combines the best of both worlds. A coworking</p><p>space ranges from 1,500 square feet to 25,000 square feet of an open floor</p><p>plan with desks, tables, and chairs spread throughout the space. Typically,</p><p>there are quiet areas (no phone calls and limited, hushed conversations),</p><p>phone booths, and more collaborative areas. Often a startup can rent a “full</p><p>office” with a shared printer, secretarial support, mailbox privileges, and the</p><p>ability to schedule the conference room. There are lots of whiteboards,</p><p>community events, evening wine and cheese or pizza and beer parties,</p><p>wireless Internet, and a thriving and intellectually curious cadre of</p><p>members. Book signings, art events, and classes are common.</p><p>General Assembly out of New York has morphed from a coworking</p><p>space into a twenty-first–century educational institute and coworking space</p><p>hybrid. Its classes (including web design, social, mobile, programming,</p><p>database design, and start-up basics) became so popular that within a couple</p><p>of years it had to scramble to find more space. Venture capital showed up,</p><p>and General Assembly is now spawning locations across the United States.</p><p>One of my favorite coworking spaces—because it is also part of the 5M</p><p>Project with TechShop (more on 5M later)—is The HUB, a social</p><p>entrepreneurial coworking space. It is part of the larger network of The</p><p>HUB Global, with thirty-some locations and growing around the world.</p><p>You must apply to join and must be working on some kind of project that is</p><p>making the world a better place. It doesn’t matter whether the project is for</p><p>profit, nonprofit, governmental, nongovernmental (NGO), or personal. As</p><p>result of this filter—though The HUB attracts some of the most thoughtful,</p><p>energetic, and interesting people who need not just space and a desk, but</p><p>ideas, collaborators, and a social network—The HUB is one of the major</p><p>nodes in the social impact ecosystem globally.</p><p>The HUB has hundreds of members at its San Francisco location, holds</p><p>numerous weekly events, and has launched dozens of companies. A number</p><p>of nonprofits have moved in, and they have successfully created one of the</p><p>busiest and most exciting coworking spaces in San Francisco. I’m glad The</p><p>HUB is in the 5M project and is our neighbor.</p><p>START-UP ACCELERATORS</p><p>Another form of coworking space, one that is focused on the start-up</p><p>process, is the start-up accelerator. These accelerators bring together all the</p><p>resources a fledgling start-up needs into one place. They have the physical</p><p>space like a coworking space, but unlike a coworking space they only</p><p>accept startups. They then provide mentorships, classes, and money to help</p><p>get the start-up on the path to success. They usually take a small percentage</p><p>of the company in exchange for the money and other services.</p><p>Plug and Play Tech Center is one example of an accelerator that came</p><p>out of the Silicon Valley and now has half a dozen locations spread around</p><p>the world. Again, you need to apply to get space at the accelerator, and you</p><p>can apply with just an idea. The accelerator brings investors into the mix so</p><p>that a firm that gets in its door also has the potential to tap an angel</p><p>investment network. The accelerator is focused on early stage start-ups,</p><p>almost exclusively software based. Other advantages here are that there are</p><p>service providers within easy reach. Lawyers, marketing, social, HR, and</p><p>accounting support have been vetted, often provide discounts, and are used</p><p>to working with start-ups, thus allowing the start-up to focus on its core</p><p>technology development. Plug and Play Tech Center also offers lots of</p><p>classes focused on all the issues that start-ups face, from how to fund an</p><p>angel round to the more esoteric but critical discussions around deal points</p><p>that founders need to be concerned about like “collars,” “ratchets,” “409a</p><p>valuations,” and “liquidity preferences.”</p><p>I like Plug and Play’s position in the ecosystem in that it will take in</p><p>existing start-ups and plug them into its system. Other accelerators only</p><p>accept the earliest stage and want to be there at the start of the development</p><p>of the idea. Y-Combinator exemplifies this approach—it is also an</p><p>accelerator but plays an earlier role. I like its position in the ecosystem</p><p>because it is something of a boot camp for start-ups. You don’t just show up</p><p>with a team and current funding and ask for space to work out of. Y-</p><p>Combinator’s approach to coworking is to run an entire cohort of start-ups</p><p>through the entire start-up process at the same time. Twice a year Y-</p><p>Combinator holds a competition to see who can get in. It has hundreds of</p><p>applicants, invites many of the start-ups to pitch days, and then selects</p><p>upwards of 80 of the applicants to receive a very small seed round of</p><p>funding, around $20,000 for 6 percent of their company. Y-Combinator then</p><p>runs these start-ups through an intense training, mentoring, preparation, and</p><p>pitch practice process that leads up to a demo day. Y-Combinator pitch days</p><p>now attract top angel and venture capitalists from the Bay Area and around</p><p>the world.</p><p>Start-ups like Dropbox, Reddit, and Airbnb have launched out of Y-</p><p>Combinator, which has been so successful with this process that SV Angel</p><p>now guarantees a follow-on investment of $150,000 in the form of</p><p>convertible debt (with very founder-friendly terms).</p><p>The problem with most of these accelerators, in my humble opinion, is</p><p>that they focus almost exclusively on software. They do this by design,</p><p>hoping to get enough advertising dollars through capturing eyeballs or</p><p>traction in a space to force someone to buy the start-up. Or, if the start-up is</p><p>lucky enough, to keep getting funding through the traditional venture</p><p>capital route. When you hear about “lean start-ups,” people are almost</p><p>exclusively talking about web, mobile, social network, or apps.</p><p>There are some interesting exceptions that incorporate the physical with</p><p>a software layer. We are seeing this particularly in the “sharing economy”</p><p>context—companies like</p><p>Uber,</p><p>Airbnb, and Getaround. They are software companies, but they</p><p>are marrying a physical delivery platform. They are also leveraging</p><p>underutilized assets, aggregating them, and exposing them through a</p><p>software delivery tool.</p><p>Uber is an on-demand black car service. You download a simple</p><p>application onto your smartphone, and when you tap the “get a car” icon,</p><p>you can get a black car to show up wherever you are in the city within</p><p>minutes. Uber taps into the reality that most black car drivers often have to</p><p>wait for hours between rides, idly waiting for a dispatcher to call with a new</p><p>ride. The excess capacity of black cars in a city like San Francisco, New</p><p>York, or DC is staggering. Yet there has been no easy way to tap into that</p><p>excess capacity until now. Historically, one would have to call hours, if not</p><p>days, before a car was needed in order to schedule a ride and then be sure to</p><p>be ready for pickup when the car arrived. It was very regimented. Uber has</p><p>enabled me to pack in more meetings in a day in New York and San</p><p>Francisco just because I know I can get a car through its smartphone</p><p>application within minutes of asking for one. Uber has bridged the physical</p><p>with the virtual.</p><p>Airbnb does the same thing with house, apartment, and room rentals in</p><p>thousands of cities around the world, exposing an enormous capacity of</p><p>rooms that could never have been discovered without this type of service.</p><p>Airbnb is a website that has aggregated thousands of spare rooms,</p><p>apartments, and houses around the world that are available to rent like hotel</p><p>rooms. Owners of the homes or apartments post the availability, costs, and</p><p>descriptions with photos of their facilities on Airbnb’s website for potential</p><p>customers to view and then rent. The excess capacity of empty rooms,</p><p>apartments, and homes is enormous. The difficulty of launching a bed and</p><p>breakfast is very high. So Airbnb has lowered the barriers both to offering a</p><p>home or room to rent and to finding a home or room to rent. As I am</p><p>writing this, our family is headed to Hilo, Hawaii, for vacation at an Airbnb</p><p>home a block from the beach. We get access to a large two-bedroom</p><p>apartment for the week, and it costs a fraction of what something that large</p><p>would run at a resort.</p><p>Getaround is a car sharing service that lets people use someone else’s</p><p>car. It’s like a rental car service, but you rent the car from your neighbor.</p><p>Again, it has joined the virtual with the physical. Getaround puts a device</p><p>on the car that allows authorized renters to drive the car. An authorized</p><p>renter uses a website or smartphone application to find a car she wants</p><p>somewhere close by and then is enabled through the device in the car to</p><p>unlock the car and start it. And again, the excess capacity of parked cars in</p><p>a city is staggering.</p><p>An accelerator representative that I spoke with recently told me that</p><p>upwards of 30 to 40 percent of the ideas that were being submitted for entry</p><p>into the program were physical, but because the accelerator couldn’t</p><p>support the development of the physical projects, only 10 to 15 percent of</p><p>the funding was going to these types of start-ups. This means that at an</p><p>absolute minimum half of the potentially viable hardware start-ups were</p><p>being turned down because there was no current infrastructure to support</p><p>them. This clearly needs to be fixed. I am beginning to see progress on the</p><p>hardware side. First, there are some new government labs focused on clean</p><p>tech, solar, biotech, and nanotech. In the United States, we also have many</p><p>university-sponsored accelerators that focus on similar areas. And we have</p><p>just begun to see a couple of hardware accelerators that are focused more on</p><p>innovation than invention. In San Francisco, Lemnos Labs started up to</p><p>replicate the Y-Combinator model with hardware. Members receive access</p><p>to Lemnos’s office, $50,000 in funding, mentorship, and the other services</p><p>expected at an accelerator. Interestingly, the accelerator didn’t buy any</p><p>equipment because it chose to locate within a few blocks of TechShop. So</p><p>the start-ups get access to TechShop, too.</p><p>The first of Lemnos Labs’ successful launches was Local Motion, a</p><p>start-up that has developed a GPS-enabled device that an organization can</p><p>put on a fleet of cars, golf carts, or even bicycles and turn them into a</p><p>shareable platform. Because Lemnos Labs is close to TechShop, Local</p><p>Motion was able to develop the hardware nearby. It started out in Lemnos’</p><p>space and then moved production into TechShop San Francisco. One of its</p><p>first prototype locations was the Google campus in Mountain View,</p><p>California, where it has 150 electric vehicles and 2,000 bicycles. Local</p><p>Motion raised a seed round of $1 million from Tim Draper of Draper</p><p>Associates, Jerry Yang, cofounder and former CEO of Yahoo!, and Tony</p><p>Hsieh of Zappos fame. Without access to a makerspace, there would be no</p><p>way to cost effectively run a Lemnos Labs. With access to a makerspace,</p><p>not only can Lemnos Labs exist, but all the other accelerators in the area</p><p>can start to pursue hardware startups as well. The entire ecosystem becomes</p><p>more efficient and broader in scope. It isn’t just about eyeballs anymore.</p><p>CREATIVE CLUSTERS</p><p>One of the most exciting collaborations TechShop has been involved in is</p><p>as a part of the Fifth and Mission project, or the 5M Project, in San</p><p>Francisco. Forest City Ratner, a large real estate development company,</p><p>along with the Hearst Corporation, the media company that also has a large</p><p>real estate presence in California, has been pursuing the purposeful</p><p>development of a creative cluster in downtown San Francisco. A brilliant</p><p>vice president at Forest City, Alexa Arena, is combining the ideas and work</p><p>of Michael Porter, Harvard professor and founder of Monitor Consulting,</p><p>on regional competitiveness and Richard Florida’s work on the creative</p><p>class.</p><p>Situated on four acres in the South of Market Area (SOMA) in San</p><p>Francisco was a grouping of underutilized buildings owned by Hearst</p><p>Corporation. Over the years, different portions of the Hearst operation in</p><p>San Francisco had moved out of the city, were outsourced, or in some</p><p>instances, closed down due to structural changes to the newspaper business</p><p>in the last few decades. Hearst wanted to do something special with the</p><p>excess space, so it partnered with Forest City to see if Forest City could</p><p>reimagine four acres of downtown San Francisco and make the ensuing</p><p>development great.</p><p>This part of San Francisco sits about one block from one of the worst</p><p>neighborhoods in the city, Sixth Street. It is also close to rapid transit, great</p><p>shopping, and the convention center. It is just on the “wrong side” of Fifth</p><p>Street.</p><p>Ms. Arena, using product development and design thinking methods</p><p>like those used by IDEO, Frog Design, and other top design firms, began a</p><p>research project to determine how to attract a key group of anchor tenants</p><p>that would help kick-start a creative cluster. As part of the project, she</p><p>interviewed a number of start-up CEOs in the city, including Twitter’s Jack</p><p>Dorsey. He was just getting started with his new company, Square, and</p><p>suggested she contact TechShop because it created its own community. She</p><p>also pulled in Intersection of the Arts and The HUB, the social cause</p><p>coworking space mentioned earlier in this chapter. There were plenty of</p><p>others in the mix as well, but this became the core group that moved into</p><p>the old Hearst campus at Fifth and Mission. Prior to the project, only</p><p>Square and TechShop knew one another. Each has a community focus and</p><p>its own focus and agenda, but each tends to attract members who are</p><p>creative, artistic, driven, articulate, social, and outgoing.</p><p>Each organization had to take big risks to open in San Francisco.</p><p>Intersection for the Arts, the oldest interdisciplinary art-granting institution</p><p>in San Francisco, had to “abandon” a part of the city where it had been</p><p>embedded for 40-plus years. The HUB had a small location in Berkeley, but</p><p>it had to sign up for three times the space in San Francisco. For TechShop,</p><p>this would become our</p><p>first corporate-owned expansion site—and we had</p><p>to raise $2.5 million to make it work. But each organization did it. Forest</p><p>City and Hearst helped greatly. Square also committed to the location. Then</p><p>magic happened.</p><p>A digital film school decided it “had” to be close by. Other start-ups</p><p>decided they, too, wanted to be close. Intersection for the Arts stepped up to</p><p>take over a gallery space on site. The HUB grew so quickly and started</p><p>spawning start-ups so fast that it doubled the space it had committed to.</p><p>TechShop took on another building to handle needs from start-ups that</p><p>wanted more space. The Monarch bar opened right on Sixth Street. On</p><p>Wednesdays and Fridays, 5M blocks off a street where Off the Grid, a local</p><p>mobile food truck cooperative, pulls in half a dozen taco trucks, Intersection</p><p>for the Arts hosts artists and musicians, and the community shows up for</p><p>lunch.</p><p>About the same time the 5M Project opened, a new organization,</p><p>SFMade, launched. The brainchild of Mark Dwight (founder of Rickshaw</p><p>Bagworks) and Kate Sofis (managing director of SFMade), it is a nonprofit</p><p>organization designed to help manufacturing companies within the city</p><p>limits of San Francisco. The idea was to become a place where</p><p>manufacturers could work together on their issues with the city and talk</p><p>about hiring, manufacturing, exporting, and all the other issues</p><p>manufacturers face in urban locations. SFMade started by simply locating</p><p>its “office” on an open table upstairs at TechShop San Francisco. Since that</p><p>simple, inauspicious start, it has grown to over 350 members and has direct</p><p>contacts into the mayor’s office and local congressional offices. SFMade</p><p>holds weekly seminars on different topics manufacturers care about and has</p><p>even expanded outside of San Francisco.</p><p>Because of its success, SFMade has begun to help other large cities</p><p>develop their own versions of SFMade. The timing is right. Manufacturing</p><p>is coming back, and urban centers have a place in the ecosystem. But</p><p>getting manufacturing to come back only works if cities understand the</p><p>unique needs of a manufacturer and work with manufacturers to make them</p><p>welcome.</p><p>The 5M Project is one of the most ambitious of these types of projects,</p><p>but there are other successful start-up ecosystems. Tim Rowe is the founder</p><p>and CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, an area of</p><p>Cambridge near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tim has seen</p><p>hundreds of start-ups come through in the last decade, and the space the</p><p>center works within has grown to over 100,000 square feet. The Cambridge</p><p>Innovation Center’s member companies have raised over $150 million in</p><p>capital and now even have a $45 million start-up fund housed on-site.</p><p>I like what Wayne State University has done in Detroit with TechTown</p><p>along with Dan Gilbert’s (Quicken Loans) BizDom. TechTown recently</p><p>disclosed that it houses over 230 companies, up from 40 just a few years</p><p>ago. These focused concentrations of tech transfer, accelerators, and seed</p><p>stage funding can work, though not easily.</p><p>PROTOTANK</p><p>Adam Ellsworth and Bryan Duxbury decided that they wanted to make a</p><p>lamp like the one in the Super Mario games. A yellow translucent box with</p><p>an eight-bit question mark on each side, the lamp is turned on by hitting the</p><p>bottom, and the user is rewarded with a little sound, just like in the game.</p><p>Adam and Bryan thought it would be a fun project to build. They had no</p><p>idea where it would take them. It was simply a personal project.</p><p>They leveraged TechShop to create the lamp pieces, using the laser</p><p>cutters to cut out the acrylic and the silkscreen station to do the basic screen</p><p>printing. They learned how to use an Arduino board—a single-board</p><p>microcontroller—to control a simple LED and hacked together a sensor to</p><p>the Arduino board that detected when the lamp was hit. They were pleased</p><p>with the result and hung it up at TechShop for other geeks to enjoy their</p><p>little hack. And then…</p><p>A gaming blog writer came through the shop, took pictures of the lamp,</p><p>and posted them online, at which point people started asking where they</p><p>could get one just like it. Within a few weeks, demand for the lamp grew to</p><p>the point that Adam and Bryan decided to do a few short runs, set up an</p><p>Etsy.com store online, and see if they could license the game icon. They</p><p>gave their project the name 8 Bit Lit and had a hard time keeping up with</p><p>demand. This is when I met them, through a woman they had just hired.</p><p>This woman, whom I had never met before, had approached me</p><p>randomly one day and thanked me for helping her get a job.</p><p>“What are you talking about?” I asked.</p><p>“You are a cofounder of TechShop, right?” she asked.</p><p>“Yes,” I said.</p><p>“Well, I lost my job last week,” she said. “I decided to come to</p><p>TechShop to learn how to do some things with my hands while I was</p><p>looking for work. I became a member today, signed up for the silkscreen</p><p>class, and now 8 Bit Lit has hired me to start helping them make lamps as</p><p>soon as I finish the class. I start my new job, here, tomorrow!”</p><p>ACCIDENTAL COMPANY FORMATION</p><p>People at 8 Bit Lit struggled to keep up with demand for a number of</p><p>weeks, switched from Arduino boards to a less expensive custom-imbedded</p><p>chip set, and had an absolute blast working with all their new friends and</p><p>coworkers. In fact, they had so much fun that after they caught up orders</p><p>and slowed down shipping, they decided to form a company, keep the team</p><p>together, and start doing custom contracting work for others. This is another</p><p>example of the power of community and ecosystems. The environment they</p><p>worked in helped them to not only make the project, but turn it into a small</p><p>run and then a company.</p><p>A NEW TYPE OF COMMUNITY</p><p>What I’ve described in this chapter is the emergence of a new kind of</p><p>community that grows up from a community that has a density of creatives</p><p>in it. But to grow this community, it needs the infrastructure, design,</p><p>purpose, support, and even building codes to flourish. Those cities that get</p><p>this right will develop a vibrant creative cluster, and that cluster will</p><p>produce culture, music, art, start-ups—and jobs.</p><p>4</p><p>Knowledge, Learning, Control, and Intelligence</p><p>“Hi, Mark, I want to introduce myself, I’m David Lang,” David introduced</p><p>himself. We were upstairs in Tech-Shop’s San Francisco location.</p><p>“Hi, David,” I said, extending my hand. “Nice to meet you, too.” I</p><p>looked around. “So, what are making?” My favorite question.</p><p>“Well, nothing yet,” David replied. “I’m just getting ready to take some</p><p>classes. I wanted to talk to you to make sure that it would be okay if I wrote</p><p>about my experience here. You see, I don’t know how to make anything,</p><p>and I want to become a maker. I convinced Make: magazine to let me write</p><p>a column on my experiences while becoming a maker. I’m calling it ‘Zero</p><p>to Maker.’ I just need to make sure it’s okay with you guys if I document</p><p>what I’m doing here.”</p><p>“What a great idea! Of course we’d love to have you document your</p><p>journey. What’s your first class?” I asked.</p><p>“One of your Dream Consultants suggested I start with the laser cutter.</p><p>I’m taking that class tonight.”</p><p>“Perfect,” I said. “We call that our ‘gateway drug’ because it’s</p><p>powerful, easy to use, and extremely addictive—all the things a pusher</p><p>needs in a gateway drug to get someone hooked.” I paused. “So, what is</p><p>your background?”</p><p>“Oh, well, my last job was chartering sailboats. The most complicated</p><p>thing I’ve ever created was a really good e-mail.”</p><p>We both laughed.</p><p>“I quit that job, and I’m trying to remake myself as a ‘maker,’” David</p><p>added. “Or at least start the journey while I look for other work.”</p><p>A couple of months later I read his first columns on the Make: blog</p><p>site. I learned that David had joined with a friend, Eric Stakepole, who had</p><p>started an OpenROV project. “Open,” as in “open source,” a strategy where</p><p>in exchange for publishing all the specifications of a project and creating a</p><p>license where anyone can use the results, people from all over the world</p><p>contribute time, energy, insight, and money to develop</p><p>a project. “ROV,” as</p><p>in “remotely operated vehicle.” The purpose of this project: to design a</p><p>robotic submarine that would make DIY underwater exploration possible</p><p>for everyone. Wow, I thought, zero to ROV is pretty ambitious.</p><p>Ambitious or not, David and Eric are making an ROV company. And</p><p>David is no longer a maker newbie. In the time since we first met, he has</p><p>taken over 20 classes and visited our space more than 200 times. The</p><p>OpenROV Kickstarter campaign raised over $110,000, and David now has</p><p>two jobs—writing for Make: magazine and working at his company with</p><p>Erik—and a book project, Zero to Maker, which he also crowdfunded on</p><p>Kickstarter. (Kickstarter is a “crowdfunding” website where people like</p><p>David post their project ideas and the “crowd”—often friends, family, and</p><p>Facebook friends—sponsors the project by pledging money through the</p><p>site. If enough people pledge enough money, the project gets funded. More</p><p>on Kickstarter later in the book.)</p><p>KNOWLEDGE</p><p>The creation, development, and distribution of knowledge are interesting</p><p>things. Whether you want it, need it, or have it already impacts what you</p><p>know as possible. But wanting it is key. Creating an engineer or a chemist</p><p>takes time.</p><p>When I say “knowledge,” I’m talking about the deep knowledge that</p><p>comes from both book knowledge and knowledge that comes from</p><p>experience Often knowledge developed through our experience is what</p><p>encourages us to go back to the book to figure out what is happening. Here</p><p>are a couple of examples:</p><p>A TechShop staff member recently observed, “You know, until you try</p><p>to mill stainless steel, you really don’t understand how hard it is.”</p><p>What was interesting about this statement was that the staff member</p><p>had taken the “strength of materials” class required for a mechanical</p><p>engineering degree, yet he had not experienced it viscerally.</p><p>John Seely Brown, former CTO of Xerox and PARC, Xerox’s famed</p><p>research lab, once came to TechShop and told us that many children learn</p><p>“through their bellybuttons.” I love the description. This staff member had</p><p>just learned through his bellybutton. Hands-on discovery is an important</p><p>part of knowledge development and a key creator in sparking a desire to</p><p>learn.</p><p>For example, I wasn’t very interested in materials strength until one day</p><p>in Special Forces field training a demo man demonstrated how to blow a</p><p>hole through a block wall. I was fascinated.</p><p>“How did you know how much to use to blow a hole, but not blow up</p><p>the entire wall?”</p><p>He showed me the formulas he used for walls, reinforced or not,</p><p>bridges (steel, wood, concrete), and the characteristics of different types of</p><p>charges and explosives. All of a sudden, I was interested in physics. Who</p><p>knew?</p><p>Likewise, I once asked my high school chemistry teacher what had</p><p>hooked him on chemistry. His reply? “Sodium.”</p><p>It turns out that pure sodium burns on contact with water. Back in my</p><p>teacher’s day, sodium was easier to get, so he got some. Then he sprinkled</p><p>it on his neighbor’s yard so that mini-volcanos of fire would erupt when the</p><p>sprinklers were turned on. (Don’t try this at home!) He was hooked for life.</p><p>Finally, I was at a high-tech conference years ago populated by senior</p><p>executives from computer software and hardware companies when the</p><p>speaker asked everyone who had been “the film projector tech guy in</p><p>school” to raise their hands. Given that only one or two of those people</p><p>were needed in each room in sixth grade, but that we would probably over-</p><p>sample, I figured half of the people in the room would raise their hands.</p><p>Surprise: Every hand was raised. The same was true for, “Who played</p><p>extensively with LEGOS?” Some folks raised both hands on that one. The</p><p>play value of LEGOS was so visceral that they wanted to give it an extra</p><p>vote.</p><p>True knowledge is born through experience. You have to physically</p><p>bore into the details of something to fully understand it. Hands-on</p><p>discovery and exploration are required to innovate. Mastery is required,</p><p>time is needed—a class on materials is not enough; you have to spend time</p><p>experimenting in the lab or in the field. True, deep knowledge is hard won</p><p>and comes with experience.</p><p>INFORMATION</p><p>We live in the information age. Google and Wikipedia answer our</p><p>questions. Khan Academy, Apple U, and, increasingly, major universities</p><p>put their courses online for anyone to find and use. You can teach yourself</p><p>just about anything now for the cost of a computer and your time. You</p><p>might not get a degree or certificate vouching that you know it, but the raw</p><p>information is there for the taking.</p><p>Interesting things happen in a world where information is free, easy to</p><p>obtain, and ubiquitous. The biggest is transparency: Everyone knows how</p><p>much Best Buy wants for the latest gizmo. It’s posted online. You can shop</p><p>Amazon, Craigslist, Best Buy, and hundreds of other merchants right now</p><p>from your cell phone. There are no longer sunk costs in driving down to the</p><p>store or mall to find out what an item is selling for. This is “friction” free</p><p>information: pricing information is available when you want and need it,</p><p>and you don’t have to pay anything for it. This information falls into the</p><p>category of “search and find costs.” In the past, search and find costs were</p><p>very high and led to suboptimal purchases—seriously expensive suboptimal</p><p>purchases.</p><p>There are two sides to a sale, though. It isn’t just that the consumer is</p><p>trying to find a store; the store is often trying to find the consumer. So the</p><p>search and find function works both ways. As you’ve probably experienced,</p><p>you can save a lot of money by shopping online and finding the thing</p><p>you’re looking for cheaper from an online store. This is true for a lot of</p><p>purchases, not just consumer purchases.</p><p>During the dot-com craze in 2000, as this friction-free flow of</p><p>information was just starting make itself felt, I was at a firm that needed an</p><p>animated logo—a cartoon. So we searched through our Rolodexes for a few</p><p>design firms we knew that could do this kind of design. We also posted the</p><p>project on an online job board. Through the traditional methods, we</p><p>received a number of inquiries and bids in the $20,000 to $40,000 range for</p><p>the work. But because we had posted the project online, we also received</p><p>some tremendous bids from lots of smaller players, independent designers,</p><p>cartoonists, and even a couple of traditional firms. We also, and this is a big</p><p>“also,” got an inquiry from a local artist who had been looking to branch</p><p>out a little and experiment. He liked the idea of working with a start-up. He</p><p>agreed to do the job for about $5,000. Not bad, but not cash—he wanted</p><p>stock. Great. Cash-starved start-ups have stock, not cash.</p><p>Now, many of you are going to think, and rightly, “So what? You saved</p><p>some money on the Internet. Big deal.” What I failed to mention is that this</p><p>was an internationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist.</p><p>So let’s review. This result exceeded all possible imagined outcomes—</p><p>by a very, very big margin. The likelihood of getting a great design had just</p><p>gone through the roof. The outcome was better. It was faster—the artist</p><p>lived within five minutes of our office—and it was most certainly cheaper:</p><p>He did the work for stock. Better, faster, and cheaper than the old-fashioned</p><p>way. Can you imagine reaching into your contacts manager and pulling up a</p><p>Pulitzer Prize–winning anyone? Then asking that person to do some work</p><p>for you on the cheap? For stock? And you want him or her to visit your</p><p>place next week to review the ideas?</p><p>This is what friction free means: both buyer and seller get connected</p><p>more quickly, cheaply, easily, and sometimes with profoundly better</p><p>outcomes.</p><p>The Internet also helps to reduce “sacrifice.” This is what a customer</p><p>has to put up with in order to get his or her needs met. There are no perfect</p><p>products, and because products have a specific utility designed into them,</p><p>the designer has to make trade-offs. Alas, the tradeoffs aren’t always what</p><p>the customers like. The item’s too big or too small, it’s not the “right”</p><p>shade</p><p>of red, it doesn’t match other accessories, it comes with a limited warranty,</p><p>or you need more of it than the seller has.</p><p>Take, for example, a simple No. 2 pencil. This should be as close to a</p><p>perfect product as there is. It’s ubiquitous, cheap, and it’s been around for</p><p>ages. It’s made of simple materials—wood, graphite, glue, and a little metal</p><p>band holding the eraser. Until I tried to understand the concept of sacrifice,</p><p>I had never looked at a pencil particularly closely. It’s a pencil. But think</p><p>about it. Do you like the scratching sound it makes when it writes? I don’t.</p><p>Do you like sharpening it? Why do we have to do that? The eraser doesn’t</p><p>actually work very well, and it’s not big enough. The graphite breaks too</p><p>often. The line width is inconsistent as the tip gets dull. The graphite smears</p><p>and gets on my hands. It’s a really yucky yellow. It doesn’t taste very good</p><p>when I chew on it. Hey, I chew on it. It should taste like cherries. It doesn’t</p><p>have a cap for when I put it in my pocket. It isn’t very strong. It’s either too</p><p>long or too short; I like mine midsized. I have to throw it away before I use</p><p>all of it. I have to carry a sharpener. It makes a mess when I sharpen it. I</p><p>waste graphite when I sharpen it. It’s not legally binding when I sign</p><p>documents with it. It isn’t classy. When was the last time you proudly</p><p>pulled out a yellow no. 2 pencil? It’s just a pencil.</p><p>How much customer sacrifice do we put up with in other areas? Lots.</p><p>One of the things that the Internet does is enable producers and consumers</p><p>to better match with one another. If you think about that for a little bit, you</p><p>begin to expect to see more producers selling fewer items today than you</p><p>did before. And you would be right. I was thrilled to run across this gem of</p><p>research from the Social Science Research Network because it proved that</p><p>this is in fact what is happening. The Internet has changed the landscape of</p><p>what is and what can be sold:</p><p>Amazon’s Long Tail has gotten significantly longer from 2000 to 2008</p><p>and . . . overall consumer surplus gains from product variety at</p><p>Amazon increased five-fold from 2000 to 2008.1</p><p>The term long tail has gained popularity in recent times as describing</p><p>the retailing strategy of selling a large number of unique items with</p><p>relatively small quantities sold of each—usually in addition to selling fewer</p><p>popular items in large quantities. The long tail was popularized by Chris</p><p>Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article in which he</p><p>mentioned Amazon.com, Apple, and Yahoo! as examples of businesses</p><p>applying this strategy.2 Anderson elaborated the concept in his book The</p><p>Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.3</p><p>And this research was concluded before the most recent economic</p><p>downturn when people started thinking more about what they bought. When</p><p>one purchases less, less frequently, and with more purpose, one focuses</p><p>more on those acquisitions and wants them to be more useful, better</p><p>constructed, fabricated by local suppliers, with local materials, and to come</p><p>with a story.</p><p>IKEA and furniture chains like Ethan Allen will discover they are</p><p>dinosaurs in the next decade. Why would I choose furniture that comes in</p><p>the wrong size, with the wrong finishes and limited choices, isn’t</p><p>customizable, isn’t personal, and is constructed by someone I’ve never met?</p><p>Particularly if I could download the basic designs, mash them up, make</p><p>them mine, and have a local artisan produce them for me? IKEA may be</p><p>able to manufacture it for less than the local artisan, but so what? There is</p><p>so much customer sacrifice with the retailer’s furniture that IKEA doesn’t</p><p>see and isn’t positioned to capture, it makes me cringe. And any local</p><p>artisan can match Ethan Allen’s prices and make the furniture locally</p><p>sourced, potentially from recycled material, and imbued with more meaning</p><p>because you can get to know the artist, select the wood, and work with the</p><p>artist on the design. What if you made the furniture yourself?</p><p>When I got “the” big promotion to senior product manager a couple of</p><p>decades ago, my wife and I decided it was time to buy some “real”</p><p>furniture. We purchased a gorgeous set from a high-quality national branded</p><p>furniture company. We got plenty of furniture for the $12,000 we put on</p><p>credit (and spent the next four years paying off), and for a solid year I felt</p><p>good every time I came home and saw those beautiful pieces sitting in our</p><p>living room. But now I get no psychic boost from the purchase. The</p><p>furniture is still beautiful, well made, high quality; we are still satisfied with</p><p>the purchase. But if I were to do it again, instead of buying the living room</p><p>set, I’d make it myself at our shop with my wife, who has always loved</p><p>woodworking but could never afford the tools.</p><p>True, this would be a serious investment of time. We would have to</p><p>skip a lot of quality TV time. But we might make a vacation out of the</p><p>adventure and get the kids involved—to build something together that we</p><p>would cherish until our dying day and then bequeath with pride to our</p><p>children. If you don’t have the time to make the furniture yourself, you</p><p>could find a local artisan through the Internet with whom you could</p><p>collaborate. You would have input into the design of the furniture, and it</p><p>would still be more meaningful than picking it up at a store.</p><p>One of the cool things is that CNC production capabilities will begin to</p><p>increase an artisan’s fabrication capabilities, allowing him or her to more</p><p>effectively compete with the larger manufacturer by increasing the artist’s</p><p>productivity, and when that happens, everything changes.</p><p>Watch for IKEA or Ethan Allen to try to compete with this new</p><p>ecosystem and to open up a “local” section in their stores and online</p><p>catalogs. Watch for them to add more customization, local artists, and DIY</p><p>sections where you can participate in the build or design process. They have</p><p>to evolve, or, like the dinosaur, they will go extinct.</p><p>LEARNING</p><p>I’ve talked about knowledge and information in this chapter. Let’s move on</p><p>to learning. Classes, books, and online instruction accelerate the acquisition</p><p>of knowledge, and the acquisition of knowledge is one of the many things</p><p>that is driving the Maker Movement. Why? Because now one can rapidly</p><p>pick up the knowledge needed to make something. Helping this is the</p><p>development of software that makes it easier and easier to control</p><p>machines, so there is less to learn.</p><p>The online universe is exploding with instruction. From Khan Academy</p><p>to Lynda.com and Instructables, it’s possible to learn calculus and what the</p><p>third derivative is, how to code in Java or use Ruby on Rails, how to</p><p>construct an electric guitar, build your first robot, or thousands of other</p><p>projects—from the comfort of your own home, on your own schedule, and</p><p>for a fraction of the cost and time investment of traditional classroom</p><p>learning.</p><p>In the past, if you wanted to personally learn how to make something</p><p>out of plastic using molding machines, you could choose the trade school</p><p>and apprentice route, maybe a junior college, or go through a full four-year</p><p>bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (and risk not actually getting</p><p>to use mills and lathes or an injection molder). Both of these could easily</p><p>take years. Now, you would sign up for a few specific software classes (two</p><p>or three class sessions), a couple of CNC classes (two or three class</p><p>sessions) and an injection molding class (one class session). You would</p><p>then have enough skills to at least get started—this month.</p><p>The New York City coworking space General Assembly started out as</p><p>mostly a coworking space and has morphed into a coworking space with</p><p>serious educational training opportunities attached. General Assembly</p><p>teaches user interface design, software programing, and other cutting-edge</p><p>training that prepares one for a job right now. Classes run in length from</p><p>one night to eight weeks. General Assembly is about to launch intensive</p><p>several-week-long training in technical areas for which U.S. universities</p><p>will not be writing curriculum for years. This is relevant, rapid instruction</p><p>from real-world practitioners.</p><p>At our shop, we impart the minimum amount of information learners</p><p>need to operate a machine safely and move their projects to the next step.</p><p>It’s a focus on adequacy rather than mastery. We don’t offer 12 weeks of</p><p>instruction on anything. The reason educational and vocational courses are</p><p>12 weeks long has more to do with keeping kids off the streets and not</p><p>competing for work and keeping educational institutions and teachers</p><p>profitable than it does with content mastery. I love our educational</p><p>institutions, but they are designed the way they are for many other things</p><p>than just imparting knowledge at the right time in the shortest period</p><p>possible.</p><p>You want to learn how to weld? You can go to a trade school and then</p><p>apprentice for months or maybe years, or you can find a local community</p><p>college that offers a 13-week course on welding basics. Alternatively, you</p><p>can buy a welder, watch some videos, and fire up the welding equipment in</p><p>your garage—and risk burning down your house. Or you can find a</p><p>makerspace and for $60 learn to weld in a couple of hours from an expert.</p><p>You won’t be a very good welder at the end of our two-hour safety and</p><p>basic use class, but you’ll know the basics of welding and how to operate</p><p>the equipment safely, and you will weld something. The odds are very high</p><p>that you will be able to produce useful things with even this little bit of</p><p>welding experience. And with some practice—well, lots of practice—you</p><p>can get good at it. Good enough to finish your project without spending 13</p><p>weeks in a classroom or spending a few hundred dollars on your own</p><p>welder and then storing it for the next decade.</p><p>What else could you learn in a day? Basic woodworking, how to use a</p><p>laser cutter or sewing machine, how to use a waterjet cutter to cut four-foot</p><p>by eight-foot sheets of steel, CAD/CAM basics, concepts of computer</p><p>numerically controlled (CNC) machines, the basics of 3D printing or vinyl</p><p>cutting, powder coating, sandblasting, basic carbon fiber, basic electronics,</p><p>or dozens of other things. Yes, it is possible to go through your own</p><p>personal maker revolution in the next 12 weeks.</p><p>CONTROL</p><p>Computer numerically controlled (CNC) milling machines, along with 3D</p><p>printers and other computer-controlled tools like that laser cutter, plasma</p><p>cutter, and waterjet have remade manufacturing over the last couple of</p><p>decades.</p><p>Beginning in the early 1950s at MIT with the first development of a</p><p>computer-tape, automatically driven, numerically controlled mill, there has</p><p>been a steady rise of the CNC machine. Moore’s law has helped to drive</p><p>down the costs of the machines and totally revolutionized the design</p><p>profession. The day of the drafting table’s demise was predicted as early as</p><p>the late 1950s and early 1960s. It took a while, but computer design has</p><p>won out over drafting. With that, the ability to copy, modify, and produce</p><p>has become much easier.</p><p>At first, these machines were extremely expensive and hard to use. A</p><p>user had to learn an esoteric scripting language called G-code to make</p><p>anything. With the development of easier-to-use software tools like</p><p>Autodesk Inventor and even easier-to-use software like Autodesk 123D</p><p>Make, the universal accessibility of design tools for making things has</p><p>become a reality. You don’t need to program in G-code or even know how</p><p>to spell it. Some of this software is free. There are also online libraries of</p><p>files that make parts so you don’t have to do much at all to get started.</p><p>The ability to design and develop something in 3D on a computer and</p><p>then use various tools to produce it is stunning. With the development of</p><p>computer cloud systems that allow users to tap into the power of networked</p><p>computers on the Internet, the ability to do very powerful development is</p><p>now at the fingertips of anyone with a computer and access to the Internet.</p><p>With more advanced tools like Autodesk Inventor, one can even model</p><p>simulations, stress analysis, strength, wear, and functionality. Using a</p><p>design software’s materials library and a finite element analysis engine, it is</p><p>possible to swap out different grades of steel or aluminum on the fly and</p><p>rerun a 10-year wear simulation in minutes.</p><p>What has really changed the “control” aspect of innovation and creation</p><p>or manufacturing in the last decade is a combination of the price and the</p><p>increasing capabilities of software and enabling platforms. Until very</p><p>recently, good computer-aided design software tool cost between $5,000</p><p>and $100,000. But not anymore. A TechShop partner, Autodesk, began</p><p>making “consumer” grade versions of its software available free. This is the</p><p>same core engine for which the company charges thousands of dollars.</p><p>Sure, Autodesk has removed items like finite element analysis, but what</p><p>does the average maker care about that? And if you really do need that,</p><p>come in and use one of our computers; they have all the fancy, expensive</p><p>software you need.</p><p>Just as wonderfully, free libraries of cool designs are popping up.</p><p>Autodesk, through a website, is supporting a community of people</p><p>uploading designs, and other sites support the open hardware movement</p><p>and provide free designs. Thingiverse.com is great. You can download the</p><p>files and modify them to meet your particular needs. Type “thingiverse</p><p>unicorn” into your Internet search engine and go to the thingiverse.com site,</p><p>and you’ll see half a dozen unicorn designs that you can print on a 3D</p><p>printer or modify and then print.</p><p>The three most popular tools at TechShop are the laser cutter, ShopBot</p><p>CNC wood router, and 3D printer, each of which can be learned in a couple</p><p>of class sessions. Our members routinely launch new careers after learning</p><p>how to use the laser cutter or ShopBot, and we save tens of thousands of</p><p>dollars at each location we build out by using the ShopBot to build furniture</p><p>for everything from our flat pack front desk to signage and storage bins.</p><p>(Flat pack is a method of using flat four-foot by eight-foot sheets to build</p><p>desks, stools, chairs, and tables.)</p><p>What has happened over the last couple of decades is that the stepper</p><p>motors and computer chips that control CNC machines have become so</p><p>powerful and affordable that they are now being attached to amateur-level</p><p>machines. The software is getting so easy to use that it’s possible to go onto</p><p>youtube.com or a software company’s website and watch an instructional</p><p>video, or take a simple introductory class, and begin making simple things</p><p>within a week. This kind of rapid productivity has never before been</p><p>possible.</p><p>In the past, if you wanted a small nightstand with a relief of your</p><p>children’s faces carved into it, you would have had to hire a craftsman to</p><p>build it for you, or attempt to make one yourself, freehand. Now you can</p><p>take some digital photos of your kids off your computer, run them through a</p><p>filter to give them depth, convert them to woodcutting instructions for the</p><p>ShopBot, and make the nightstand this weekend. At a maker-space, you can</p><p>accomplish this with three classes to become familiar with the necessary</p><p>equipment, some free software, and a little experimentation to make</p><p>something that your children will want to keep for the rest of their lives.</p><p>The “control” aspect of this revolution is hard to over-estimate. At the</p><p>national level, the U.S. government’s interest in advanced manufacturing as</p><p>a competitive opportunity to bring manufacturing back to the United States</p><p>is being driven by this capability. I’ll talk about that more in a coming</p><p>chapter.</p><p>PERSONAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION</p><p>The first industrial revolution started around the year 1760 with the</p><p>invention of mass manufacturing machines. The tailor uprising in France</p><p>that contributed to the French Revolution was a direct result of the</p><p>understanding of the tailor guild that its members’ way of life—their</p><p>control of the tools of production—was being taken over by mechanization.</p><p>As the development of the industrial revolution went forward,</p><p>opposition to</p><p>the new realities of production developed, eventually with Marx developing</p><p>the idea that the tools of production should be owned by the state, not</p><p>capitalists. I would postulate that few people joined the communist</p><p>revolutionary movements because they truly believed the state should raise</p><p>children apart from their parents. People joined the party because they were</p><p>losing control of their means of production. For thousands of years, people</p><p>owned their own tools to accomplish their work. They produced with their</p><p>hands and their tools. With the rise of industrial machines, it became too</p><p>expensive for individuals to own the means of production, and average</p><p>craftspeople began to lose control of the tools they used to produce and thus</p><p>became laborers.</p><p>Improvements in driving these machines came through the introduction</p><p>of the steam engine, the refinement of the steam engine (the by-products of</p><p>which were water pumping systems that allowed miners to mine more</p><p>deeply for coal and ore), and the birth of the modern steel movement.</p><p>Electricity came along, possibly the demarcation for the beginning of the</p><p>second industrial revolution, bringing with it lightbulbs and electric</p><p>engines, and over a period 150 years life was truly revolutionized. There is</p><p>a lot of debate among historians about the timing of the start of the</p><p>industrial revolution, as well as if and when the second industrial revolution</p><p>occurred. Prior to electricity, industrialization was driven primarily by</p><p>steam. The old plants had huge conveyers transferring power around a</p><p>plant. With the discovery of electricity and the invention of electric motors</p><p>power was more easily distributed.</p><p>Eventually the industrial revolution was exported. Japan went through</p><p>its industrial revolution much more quickly in the 1870s, followed by the</p><p>rest of Asia, including India and China a century later. Each time, the cycle</p><p>shortened until the industrialization of a nation could be accomplished in 10</p><p>to 20 years. But still, the tools of industrial revolution were confined to</p><p>those who could afford them—namely, big businesses.</p><p>Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Japanese started to produce capital</p><p>tools and drive down their costs. Right behind them, the Chinese came in</p><p>and drove down the costs still further. Over the last 20 to 30 years, there has</p><p>been a greater than 70 percent reduction in the price of just the basic mill</p><p>and lathe. One can now get a good lathe from China for $5,000 or a mill for</p><p>$10,000. This is expensive, but not beyond the reach of a small business. As</p><p>a result, the tool and die industry in the United States has all but dried up</p><p>with the combination of inexpensive tools and cheap labor from other</p><p>countries.</p><p>In parallel with this trend over the last 20 years, computers have been</p><p>following the well-known Moore’s law wherein computers double their</p><p>capabilities every 18 months while maintaining their price. Initially, they</p><p>were very expensive. Attach a computer and software license to a milling</p><p>machine, and you added $120,000 to its cost. In addition, the operator had</p><p>to learn how to program G-code and the software that produced it, which</p><p>typically took six months to a year, assuming one knew how to use a mill to</p><p>begin with.</p><p>All this has changed. Computers have invaded the manufacturing floor.</p><p>Instead of costing $250,000 to $500,000 for a CNC mill, it’s now possible</p><p>to purchase one for less than $20,000, including the software. This is still a</p><p>lot of money, but if you use a membership makerspace that has one, you</p><p>can have access to it for around $125 a month. In addition, the CNC</p><p>software is getting easier and easier to use; I see people go from</p><p>introduction to producing useful parts in less than a week. I believe we are</p><p>on the cusp of a third industrial revolution. Chris Anderson has called this</p><p>the “New Industrial Revolution.” It is being driven by inexpensive access to</p><p>easy-to-use and powerful computer-controlled tools, including the magical</p><p>3D printers. Access to a complete innovation lab like a fully equipped</p><p>makerspace has dropped by four orders of magnitude. With the</p><p>development of pay-by-the-month maker-spaces access to these tools are</p><p>1/10,000 of what it would have cost just 10 to 15 years.</p><p>I started this chapter with David Lang, someone who had never made</p><p>anything, but who through classes and access acquired enough knowledge</p><p>and experience to take a leading role in developing a robot company, David</p><p>essentially went through his own personal industrial revolution in about 90</p><p>days. Not 150 years, or 30 or 10. Ninety days. Hello. People can now go</p><p>through their own personal industrial revolution for hundreds of dollars, not</p><p>millions, and they can do it in weeks, not years or decades. It is not unfair to</p><p>call it a revolution.</p><p>I met Perrin Lam much the same way. He introduced himself to me by</p><p>saying, “I just want to say thanks for opening here in San Francisco. My</p><p>name’s Perrin, and I’m remaking myself.”</p><p>Perrin is an older gentleman, a copywriter by profession, with probably</p><p>close to 40 years of experience. He had started out at a big ad agency</p><p>decades earlier, worked on big brand, advertising campaigns, and</p><p>eventually went to the client side. He ultimately ended up writing</p><p>advertising copy for a major newspaper, where he had good long career</p><p>until the Internet and Craigslist all but destroyed the newspaper business.</p><p>That’s when I met him, about a week after he lost his job.</p><p>“Imagine my dilemma, Mark. I’m a 60-year-old newspaper copywriter.</p><p>Who is going to hire me?” Not waiting for my reply, he continued, “I’m</p><p>going to become a jeweler. I think that laser cutter can do just what I want it</p><p>to.”</p><p>I recently ran into Perrin, and he was excited. It’s been a couple of</p><p>years now, and he has begun to sell his jewelry to the local museum store</p><p>market. When I ran into him, he was getting ready to attend the national</p><p>museum store buyer convention to show off how he could customize</p><p>jewelry to match the unique character or domain of the museum.</p><p>One of the great things about remaking yourself is that you don’t forget</p><p>your other skills. Perrin’s website, business cards, and brochures absolutely</p><p>sing. You see, he is a pretty good copywriter.</p><p>INTELLIGENCE</p><p>There is a great deal of interest in the concept of advanced manufacturing.</p><p>This is a large and diverse topic. Most of the press coverage is focused on</p><p>the 3D printer as it is the “new” thing (as much as a 25-year-old technology</p><p>can be new), but the field also includes CNC, robotics, and software.</p><p>Design software tools are getting sophisticated enough now that they will</p><p>do failure and manufacturing analysis and make suggestions on how to</p><p>change a design to make it more manufacturing friendly.</p><p>A truly intelligent manufacturing system would understand what you</p><p>were trying to make and would know what manufacturing capabilities you</p><p>had, the quality you were trying to achieve, the materials at your disposable,</p><p>the cost constraints you were working with, and a range of other needs. It</p><p>would then interactively help you to optimize the product you were trying</p><p>to make within the constraints it was given. It would also provide a</p><p>complete set of automated (or, more likely, semiautomated) instructions on</p><p>how to manufacture it in a flexible manufacturing environment. If that</p><p>environment were a highly automated manufacturing location, one could</p><p>envision limited human interactions. That’s the goal, anyway.</p><p>But let’s keep going. Many components will come with smart sensors. I</p><p>worked on a project years ago that envisioned a future in which parts would</p><p>know how they were doing (if they were broken, cold, stressed, bent, etc.)</p><p>and could signal when a problem was developing. Imagine a bushing in an</p><p>automobile with a cheap sensor that, when deformed, would send out a</p><p>signal that it was about to fail. It isn’t hard to imagine, then, a whole series</p><p>of events being kicked off that would ensure a replacement was made for</p><p>you, staged, and ready for repair the next time you were at the dealership.</p><p>Mind</p><p>have been friends and now collaborators for 30 years.</p><p>Thanks also to our finance team, including David Ehrenburg, Dee and Mike</p><p>Hibberd, Fern Heyman, and Rosemary Vo for all your hard work.</p><p>We have a great group of advisers who have helped TechShop and me</p><p>in various ways: Doug Busch (board member), Chris Anderson, Guy</p><p>Kawasaki, Nolan Bushnel, Eric Von Hippel, Joe Pine, Jerry Gramaglia,</p><p>Bruce Wonnacott, Todd Ordal, and Phoenix Wang.</p><p>Thank you to all the “friends of TechShop” like Bob Johanson, Mickey</p><p>McManus, the Make Magazine crew, North of Nine Communications, our</p><p>friends at Singularity University, Lesa Mitchel at Kauffman, Ping Fu, Nick</p><p>Pinkston, James McKelvy, Patrick Buckley, Jane Chen, Taylor Kuffner,</p><p>Patrick Maloney, Bre Pettis, Ayah Bdeir, Logan McClore, Frank Piler,</p><p>Loren Kennedy, Liam Casey, Lisa Gansky, Niels Neilsen, Deborah</p><p>Cullinan, Mary Sullivan, Mike Rowe, Jeff Kempler, Michael Ventura, Mike</p><p>North, Vivek Wadhwa, Anton Willis, Jennifer Giering, our Forest City</p><p>friends including Alexa Arena, Alex Michel and Kevin Ratner, Dave Byers</p><p>at Hearst, Scott Bohannon, all of our investors, lenders and members.</p><p>A shout out to the team that pulled this together: Laurie Connolly</p><p>again, who cleaned up my scribbling before the editors got to see it; my</p><p>agent Frank Breeden (thanks for hanging in there); Donya Dickerson</p><p>without whom this book would not be in your hands; and Pamela Peterson,</p><p>Chelsea Van Der Gaag, Scott Kurtz, and a host of others who help sell,</p><p>market, and ship.</p><p>To my wife and life partner Cindy and our two great boys, Christopher</p><p>and Luke, thank you for doing life with me.</p><p>Maker Movement Manifesto</p><p>MAKE</p><p>Making is fundamental to what it means to be human. We must make,</p><p>create, and express ourselves to feel whole. There is something unique</p><p>about making physical things. These things are like little pieces of us</p><p>and seem to embody portions of our souls.</p><p>SHARE</p><p>Sharing what you have made and what you know about making with</p><p>others is the method by which a maker’s feeling of wholeness is</p><p>achieved. You cannot make and not share.</p><p>GIVE</p><p>There are few things more selfless and satisfying than giving away</p><p>something you have made. The act of making puts a small piece of you</p><p>in the object. Giving that to someone else is like giving someone a</p><p>small piece of yourself. Such things are often the most cherished items</p><p>we possess.</p><p>LEARN</p><p>You must learn to make. You must always seek to learn more about</p><p>your making. You may become a journeyman or master craftsman, but</p><p>you will still learn, want to learn, and push yourself to learn new</p><p>techniques, materials, and processes. Building a lifelong learning path</p><p>ensures a rich and rewarding making life and, importantly, enables one</p><p>to share.</p><p>TOOL UP</p><p>You must have access to the right tools for the project at hand. Invest</p><p>in and develop local access to the tools you need to do the making you</p><p>want to do. The tools of making have never been cheaper, easier to</p><p>use, or more powerful.</p><p>PLAY</p><p>Be playful with what you are making, and you will be surprised,</p><p>excited, and proud of what you discover.</p><p>PARTICIPATE</p><p>Join the Maker Movement and reach out to those around you who are</p><p>discovering the joy of making. Hold seminars, parties, events, maker</p><p>days, fairs, expos, classes, and dinners with and for the other makers in</p><p>your community.</p><p>SUPPORT</p><p>This is a movement, and it requires emotional, intellectual, financial,</p><p>political, and institutional support. The best hope for improving the</p><p>world is us, and we are responsible for making a better future.</p><p>CHANGE</p><p>Embrace the change that will naturally occur as you go through your</p><p>maker journey. Since making is fundamental to what it means to be</p><p>human, you will become a more complete version of you as you make.</p><p>In the spirit of making, I strongly suggest that you take this manifesto,</p><p>make changes to it, and make it your own. That is the point of making.</p><p>Introduction</p><p>Welcome to the next big thing, the Maker Movement and its revolution. We</p><p>are still riding out the waves of the last big things, the computer revolution</p><p>and the explosion of the Internet. But because the maker revolution is</p><p>physical, it is destined to be bigger. We can’t live in a computer or on the</p><p>Internet, but we do live in houses, drive cars, wear clothes, use medical</p><p>devices, play with toys, eat, grow, and live in the real world. I love the</p><p>virtual world, but even its next big foray—the Internet of Things (where we</p><p>connect physical objects up to sensors attached to the Internet)—will</p><p>leverage and reside in its very physicalness. For the Internet of Things to</p><p>work, there must be “things” to be attached to. What is happening and</p><p>helping to drive the Maker Movement is that the nature of making things is</p><p>changing. That is primarily what this book is about: the changing nature of</p><p>making things and its tremendous impact on your life.</p><p>TECHSHOP, INC.</p><p>I’m the CEO of TechShop, a membership-based, do-it-yourself (DIY), open</p><p>access, fabrication workspace. From my unique perch in the Maker</p><p>community, I have had the opportunity over the last six years to see the</p><p>emergence of a movement, the Maker Movement. TechShop is an integral</p><p>player in that movement. Started in October 2006 by Jim Newton and a</p><p>group of diehard maker enthusiasts in Menlo Park, California, TechShop</p><p>was the first open-access shop of its kind. With six locations open across</p><p>the United States at the time of this writing, and many more in the works</p><p>and aspirations to go international, TechShop is now the largest and most</p><p>influential makerspace in the world.</p><p>Shop locations average 16,000 to 20,000 square feet in size, with every</p><p>tool and piece of equipment needed to make just about anything . . . like the</p><p>world’s fastest motorcycle, the world’s first desktop diamond-</p><p>manufacturing device, the world’s cheapest drip irrigation system, and</p><p>award-winning start-ups, one of which is currently worth billions of dollars.</p><p>It is the most creative hub of activity in every city where it opens. People</p><p>move to be near one; others take extended vacations in them; and a number</p><p>of venture-backed start-ups have temporarily relocated their engineering</p><p>teams to work out of the space. TechShop is changing the nature of making</p><p>things, who gets to make them, and how they are made. The platform is</p><p>allowing anyone over 16 years old to make almost anything, in a space</p><p>designed for them, with access to the world’s most powerful and easy-to-</p><p>use machines the world has ever seen.</p><p>A LITTLE ABOUT ME</p><p>Through my work at Avery Dennison in the 1990s as corporate director of</p><p>global technology and business development, I developed an understanding</p><p>of the importance of and barriers to manufacturing. As director of computer</p><p>services at Kinko’s at the beginning the 2000s, where I managed a $200-</p><p>million product line of publically available, open access, computers systems</p><p>(10,000+) along with powerful software tied to large expensive high</p><p>production machines, I saw firsthand the transformative power of open</p><p>access to tools. We launched more design firms every year out of Kinko’s</p><p>than any school ever did.</p><p>As the former owner/operator of an auto body shop, I understand the</p><p>importance of pride and craftsmanship, the local aversion to manufacturing,</p><p>and the sometimes stifling effects of regulation. And now, as the CEO of</p><p>TechShop, I have a unique opportunity to arm a Maker Movement army</p><p>with the tools it needs to change itself and the world.</p><p>Along the way, I also picked up an MBA at the feet of the grandfather</p><p>of management, Peter Drucker, and I am a trained revolutionary, thanks to</p><p>the Special Forces training I received on my way to becoming a Green</p><p>Beret. I use the dialectic of movements, manifestos, and revolutions</p><p>explicitly.</p><p>MAKER MOVEMENT MOMENTUM</p><p>A number of trends are coming together to push the Maker Movement</p><p>forward. Cheap, powerful, and easy-to-use tools play an important role.</p><p>Easier access to knowledge, capital, and markets also help to push the</p><p>revolution. A renewed focus on community and local resources and a desire</p><p>you, it isn’t broken yet, just getting ready to break. And when the</p><p>above problem is tied into an advanced, distributed manufacturing system,</p><p>the part would be made on demand at the time of need. It might not be the</p><p>exact same part—replacement parts are a big business for automobile</p><p>companies, and the parts markup is huge. A car company also has to carry</p><p>the inventory and distribution costs. The automobile company might make</p><p>more money upgrading the part slightly so that it could be made locally on</p><p>demand.</p><p>I could see internal plastic components being laser sintered out of</p><p>aluminum as a “cheaper” solution that is actually better from the</p><p>consumer’s perspective. Again, a typical new replacement part is three</p><p>times as expensive as the original part integrated into the automobile</p><p>because of all the carrying costs associated with it. Also, you can’t always</p><p>get just the part you need. I replaced an entire handle system on a car</p><p>recently because a plastic piece broke, and I paid over $300 for the parts</p><p>and $100 for the labor. Milling the piece out of solid stainless steel might</p><p>have been cheaper than replacing the entire assembly. In the not-too-distant</p><p>future, this ability to make parts on demand will become a viable option.</p><p>And the car companies might actually make more money on it.</p><p>To recap, intelligence will not just be part of the advanced</p><p>manufacturing platform but will become imbedded into the parts,</p><p>components, assemblies, and systems it produces. This creates an entire</p><p>ecosystem tied together through robust digitalization, communication,</p><p>status checks, and work flow. Intelligence indeed.</p><p>5</p><p>Fueling Innovation</p><p>CROWDSOURCING</p><p>Ben Young came up to me one afternoon to introduce himself.</p><p>“Hi, I’m Ben. I just want to say thank you for building Tech-Shop and</p><p>helping people like me launch new products.”</p><p>He and his brother Ivan Wong, along with a friend, Anne Bui, were</p><p>working together on a project.</p><p>“Nice to meet you, Ben. Thank you for being such an enthusiastic</p><p>member,” I replied. “So, what are you making?”</p><p>“Well, you see, I’m a professional sports photographer,” Ben said. “Do</p><p>you know what the problem is with professional SLR cameras?” Very</p><p>animated, Ben clearly believed there was something about a camera that</p><p>needed to be fixed.</p><p>“I have no idea.”</p><p>“Well, the loop strap mounts on a camera are on the top of the camera</p><p>body. This is, like, the worst possible place for the strap—okay, it would’ve</p><p>been worse if the mounts were on the lens. Anyway, my partners and I have</p><p>been e-mailing and talking to all the camera makers, trying to get them to</p><p>put the straps mounts on the bottom of the camera body so that the strap</p><p>won’t be in the way when you are trying to take photos.” Ben paused. “I</p><p>can’t believe the camera companies aren’t listening to us. But they aren’t.”</p><p>I nodded.</p><p>“As a sports photographer, I find the straps are a real problem</p><p>sometimes; they get in front of the lens and in the photo if I’m trying to</p><p>move with a fast-moving car or athlete.” Ben was on a roll. “And,</p><p>ergonomically, it would be easier to grab a camera and get it into position if</p><p>it were upside-down and I could just grab a corner of the camera body,</p><p>move it to my eye, and shoot. We often carry a couple of cameras at a time</p><p>so we don’t have to change lenses. It’s just stupid design.” Ben finished</p><p>with deep disappointment in his voice.</p><p>“Wow, I had no idea it was that much of an issue,” I said. “So what are</p><p>you doing about it?”</p><p>“Well, we are professional photographers, not mechanical engineers,</p><p>but we have been able to build a bunch of prototypes after taking some</p><p>classes and getting some help from our partner, Anne Bui, a product</p><p>designer for Fox Racing. . . . Because our prototypes don’t hold the camera</p><p>in just one position, but let it swivel on our loop design, it makes it even</p><p>easier to protect the lens by having it swivel in close to the body and not</p><p>stick straight out when we aren’t using the camera. We call it C-Loop.”</p><p>“What is the design?” I asked.</p><p>“We came up with this.” Ben showed me a prototype and proceeded to</p><p>explain that the C-Loop bolt was designed to thread into the camera tripod-</p><p>mount hole at the bottom of a camera, with two loopholes for the straps</p><p>close to the mount hole. The built-in swivel is small, unobtrusive, and</p><p>solves the problems photographers have with the top-mounted design.</p><p>“Nice,” I said encouragingly. It looked like something of a niche</p><p>product, but clearly an upgrade to most strap mounts. “What are you going</p><p>to do now?”</p><p>Ben lit up. “We’re going to try Kickstarter and see if we can raise the</p><p>$15,000 we need to do a production run. We’ve found a place in San</p><p>Francisco that can manufacture it for us, but they have minimums, so we</p><p>need to order 500 at a time.”</p><p>“Wow, that’s great. Locally made, too. Good luck with the Kickstarter</p><p>campaign.”</p><p>A couple of months later, I ran into Ben and his brother Ivan.</p><p>“Hey, so how’s the Kickstarter campaign going?” I asked.</p><p>With a great big smile Ben said, “Fabulous! We’ve raised over $60,000.</p><p>Anne quit her job, and I’m not going back to school next semester.”</p><p>“What’s next?” I asked</p><p>“Well, first we have to deliver on the ones that have been ordered, but</p><p>we are getting inquiries now from some retailers and distributors, and we’re</p><p>leveraging this to launch a camera accessory company.”</p><p>KICKSTARTER</p><p>Launched in 2009 by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler,</p><p>Kickstarter is the largest crowdfunding site on the web. Initially focused on</p><p>all forms of art (including film, theater, journalism, and photography) and</p><p>then quickly into almost anything imaginable that the folks at Kickstarter</p><p>thought was cool, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other websites like them have</p><p>become the go-to, web-enabled platforms to get projects and now product</p><p>ideas funded by the crowd.</p><p>The way it works is this: An artist or entrepreneur comes up with</p><p>sponsorship levels for the project he or she is working on. Say pledging $5</p><p>gets you a postcard, $20 gets you a T-shirt, and $35 gets you the item that’s</p><p>being launched. The artist sets a minimum threshold needed to get the</p><p>project done (which can lead to problems if the amount is set too low) and</p><p>then goes through an application process. If the application is accepted, the</p><p>project goes live. In C-Loop’s case, Ben and his team were looking for</p><p>$15,000 and gave themselves 42 days to raise it. By setting a threshold and</p><p>not funding the project if the threshold is not reached, “investors” or</p><p>“customers” don’t run the risk of being part of a partially funded project</p><p>that they have put money into.</p><p>The founders of Kickstarter wanted to figure out a web-enabled way</p><p>that their artist friends could point to that would help them raise money. It</p><p>has become wildly successful. For example, Pebble, a watch idea that uses a</p><p>wireless interface with smartphones, famously raised over $10 million on</p><p>Kick-starter after seeking $100,000.</p><p>Online crowdsourcing really changes the fundamentals for financing</p><p>products. It democratizes access to capital in a way we haven’t seen since</p><p>the Glass-Steagall act of 1933 made it illegal to advertise for investors. But</p><p>this is even better, for the artists are not selling stock, they are preselling</p><p>products or projects and as such aren’t giving up a piece of their companies.</p><p>A subtle result is that this platform has become a natural conduit for</p><p>launching “lifestyle” businesses. A lifestyle business is one that provides an</p><p>income to the founders but isn’t large enough or profitable enough to</p><p>become a “big” company and have a big “exit.”</p><p>If you take money from an angel group or venture capitalist, they will</p><p>want to see a big exit (lots of money coming back). They don’t fund</p><p>lifestyle businesses. Family, friends, and the bank have historically been the</p><p>only sources of capital, outside of savings or credit cards, to launch lifestyle</p><p>businesses. But friends, family, and banks are often not in a very good place</p><p>to assess the likelihood of someone having a product that will sell. So this</p><p>solves both issues:</p><p>you don’t have to be planning on a big exit for</p><p>professional investors, and you don’t have to ask your family or friends to</p><p>lend you large amounts of money or invest in your business. This platform</p><p>helps to prove or disprove whether it is a good project or not by whether</p><p>enough money was raised to fund the project. Brilliant. And better, it funds</p><p>things that would likely be impossible to get funding for from traditional</p><p>sources.</p><p>Crowdfunding of art projects, services, and products has been so</p><p>successful that in 2012 Congress revisited the idea of crowdfunding and</p><p>passed the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act, which will allow</p><p>companies to sell securities and raise loans through crowdfunding portals.</p><p>The JOBS Act promises to jump-start the entry-level economics for startups</p><p>in the United States by making it substantially easier to raise money. And</p><p>because the web is a useful tool for identifying fake projects and posers, a</p><p>new tool for creating startups will be born.</p><p>Someone tried to launch a fake game on Kickstarter in April 2012 but</p><p>got caught quickly. The ability to research the backgrounds of those posting</p><p>projects and trying to get funding is only a click away. I’m sure there will</p><p>be a high profile case of fraud, but I sure hope it doesn’t shut this new</p><p>financing conduit down. It is one thing to have some people lose a hundred</p><p>dollars on an occasional bad Kickstarter project and a completely different</p><p>thing to have Enron or Bernard Madoff take billions of dollars in a pyramid</p><p>scheme and have investors lose their life savings.</p><p>It is hard to overestimate the importance of the development of</p><p>crowdfunding as a source of early capital to start projects and launch</p><p>companies. At TechShop, we have probably seen over 100 projects flow</p><p>through, or touch, our locations on their way to Kickstarter success. We</p><p>now teach classes on how to launch a successful Kickstarter project.</p><p>Danae Ringelmann, a founder at the international crowd-funding site</p><p>Indiegogo, talks about the five reasons people invest. Only one of them is</p><p>profit. This is important because the financial infrastructure and rules</p><p>against advertising in the United States make it almost impossible to find</p><p>people who will invest for the other four reasons. And people invest for</p><p>portions of each: passion, participation, perks, pride, and, finally, profit:</p><p>• Passion. People love to invest time, money, and effort in things they</p><p>are passionate about. Tom’s Shoes comes to mind. You know, the</p><p>company that gives away a pair of shoes to someone in the</p><p>developing world every time you buy one. What a great idea. But if</p><p>people were only interested in profit (what they were getting,</p><p>monetarily, out of the deal), why would they pay more for a pair of</p><p>shoes so that someone else would get a pair? Isn’t that what</p><p>charities are for?</p><p>• Participation. Many of the film projects on Indiegogo are funded</p><p>because friends and family want to participate in some way in the</p><p>project. They don’t actually expect to get or be offered a return on</p><p>their investment. They just want to support what a person they</p><p>know is doing; they don’t want to loan money; they don’t want</p><p>international royalty rights. They just want to participate.</p><p>• Perks. Hey, and by participating, these friends, family,</p><p>acquaintances, and other investors might actually get to be an extra</p><p>in that movie. Or they may get to be invited to the cast party, a</p><p>special event, and/or dinner with the director. What do they care</p><p>more about—the movie or hanging out at a party with the director</p><p>and a bunch of movie folks? Is that worth $50 bucks, $100 bucks,</p><p>maybe $500? Why not?</p><p>• Pride. I was pleased to see that pride was on Danae’s list. Yes, one</p><p>of the seven deadly sins is a motivator to invest. As is greed</p><p>(profit). Who wouldn’t want to help a successful restaurant come to</p><p>your local neighborhood? Pride of helping the community by</p><p>participating in local projects and events is a great motivator for</p><p>those who know how to tap into it well.</p><p>Crowdfunding allows for the combination of reasons that people invest,</p><p>and it makes it possible for projects and investors to find each other.</p><p>Another new friend, Dan Miller, recently launched Fundrise.com, a real</p><p>estate crowdfunding site, with his brother. The idea here is that locals invest</p><p>together in local real estate, thus potentially controlling the nature of the</p><p>development in their neighborhoods. Do people invest for profit? Sure they</p><p>do, but they also want to participate in their local community; they are</p><p>passionate about the types of businesses that are on the corner. They take</p><p>pride in owning a piece of the neighborhood and might get a few perks</p><p>from the local restaurant that moved in because the landlord (they) leaned</p><p>into the project and cut a budding restaurateur a great lease.</p><p>This is not the same thing as a real estate investment trust (REIT), a</p><p>security that sells like a stock on Wall Street and invests in real estate</p><p>directly. This is local ownership with pride and passion. This is</p><p>crowdfunding at its best. And it is radically different from pure</p><p>development.</p><p>ALIBABA</p><p>If you are about to use Kickstarter to get going, then it may be time to look</p><p>into manufacturing in volume offshore. Now, as you can probably tell by</p><p>the tone of this book, I prefer to see manufacturing closer to the market. But</p><p>the reality of international commerce and economics is such that it is often</p><p>just plain cheaper to get a product made overseas. Particularly in developed</p><p>categories with low margins, one has to squeeze as much cost out as</p><p>possible. Setting up one’s own manufacturing plant in the early stages of</p><p>growth may not make sense. It may never make sense. But many of the</p><p>Kickstarter projects I’ve seen are potential candidates for finding contract</p><p>manufacturing around the world.</p><p>Once again, the Internet comes to save the day. A Chinese Internet</p><p>company, Alibaba.com, a global e-commerce platform that connects buyers</p><p>and suppliers around the world, is like the eBay of global contract</p><p>manufacturing. It is possible to have just about anything made for</p><p>extremely competitive prices. This is where China really does shine. It’s not</p><p>just that the Chinese can do it cheaply, it’s that they have a very dense</p><p>network of suppliers who carry almost everything and short, tight supply</p><p>chains that can get the rest. The number and variety of flexible</p><p>manufacturers in China with access to the hardest-to-find components</p><p>means the job can be done quickly and cheaply and you can have it drop-</p><p>shipped to your door anywhere in the world. This is the true competitive</p><p>advantage that China has developed: there is no place else in the world</p><p>where anything can be made, in volume, quickly, and very inexpensively.</p><p>Some of the world’s best manufacturing capabilities are now only a click</p><p>away.</p><p>ETSY</p><p>I met Christopher Steinrueck of Wood Thumb at Maker Faire 2011 in San</p><p>Mateo, California. We gave him some space in the TechShop area where we</p><p>were showcasing what some of our members were making. Christopher</p><p>makes wooden ties—ones that go around the neck, not ones on a railroad.</p><p>He scavenges deadwood and reclaimed wood from barns, the beach, or</p><p>reclamation centers. He then creates custom, or bespoke, ties from the</p><p>wood.</p><p>I admit, I had a hard time understanding why someone would want to</p><p>make wooden ties—but then I saw them. They are beautiful. I was a little</p><p>dubious he’d sell very many, but Father’s Day was coming up, so maybe</p><p>he’d sell a few.</p><p>Boy, was I wrong. Christopher sold out his entire inventory by lunch on</p><p>the first day. He ran back to the shop to make as many more as he could</p><p>before the next day, and then spent the rest of the faire taking orders and</p><p>promising to have them ready for Father’s Day. Then he learned about Etsy,</p><p>a website where people sell handmade or vintage items.</p><p>Etsy is wonderful for creating a market for people who make things by</p><p>hand. There is a big social component to what Etsy does. The site makes it</p><p>easy for users to set up an Etsy store, and it provides online tutorials,</p><p>a</p><p>community of store owners, and now even regional meetups and fairs.</p><p>People who make things by hand have now found an online market</p><p>designed for them. It isn’t eBay; it’s a social store for crafters and makers to</p><p>meet and sell products that they have made to their customers and, in many</p><p>instances, their customers’ families and friends. It is a great way to reach</p><p>out across the Internet and reach the friends of friends of friends, strangers</p><p>who are actually within your broader network. This happens through “likes”</p><p>on Facebook, retweets on Twitter, and even through e-mail, personal</p><p>websites, or PR. Etsy has created a fabulous global following by enabling</p><p>people like Christopher to quickly and easily set up a web store and find</p><p>customers around the world.</p><p>I didn’t buy a tie from Christopher that weekend, but I now own a</p><p>beautiful redwood tie, I bought my father one, and I purchased a wooden</p><p>bow tie for my son. I ordered them from the ThinkGeek catalog for</p><p>Christmas. Sweet. As for Christopher, he went from budding entrepreneur</p><p>at his first fair to being distributed through online and offline catalogs.</p><p>Another lifestyle business built through a combination of online tools and</p><p>access to physical tools.</p><p>YES & YES DESIGNS</p><p>Laura Bruland of Yes & Yes Designs is another of my favorites. She is a</p><p>great example of the potentially liberating power of the combination of</p><p>these new economic forces at play. I met Laura for the first time in 2011,</p><p>about the same time I met Christopher. I believe she used to be a barista,</p><p>though she was so focused on her art that she had little interest in talking</p><p>about her day job. However, she was happy to tell me about her weekend</p><p>sport as “Chiquita Bonanza,” a member of the Bay Area Derby Girls roller</p><p>derby team.</p><p>I like to joke with Laura about her “hatred” for books because she rips</p><p>the covers off them and then tortures the hardback covers with lasers. Well,</p><p>not really. Laura loves books, but she does use discarded, outdated book</p><p>covers to make custom jewelry with the laser cutter. Like many artists, once</p><p>she was shown all that a laser cutter could do, she was off and running.</p><p>In her own words, Laura makes “bold and one-of-a-kind jewelry from</p><p>recycled books.” It is beautiful. Laura sells mostly earrings, necklaces, and</p><p>pins, all of which have something of 1950s vintage feel to them. She, too,</p><p>came to the Maker Faire and has been doing weekend shows and building</p><p>her business. TechShop featured her in an advertisement, and Wired.com</p><p>featured her in the “Wired Design” section. She quickly learned about Etsy,</p><p>set up a store, and began promoting herself online as well as at the weekend</p><p>events.</p><p>About a year later, Laura was so busy she was running up against our</p><p>shop’s limits on the amount of time one can use the laser cutter (we are</p><p>good for short runs, but you can’t set up a manufacturing center). She</p><p>wasn’t sure what to do but then hit on the idea of launching a Kickstarter</p><p>campaign to raise enough money to buy her own laser cutter. “I need a laser</p><p>cutter. I will name her Lucky,” it says on her campaign page. Well, Laura</p><p>raised over $8,000 and bought herself a laser cutter. Yes & Yes Designs is</p><p>now in 25 retailers around the world, including the San Francisco Museum</p><p>of Modern Art store.</p><p>WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?</p><p>Wooden ties, furry hats, book cover art, watches, iPad covers, iPhone</p><p>covers, robots, furniture, clothing, jewelry. What are you waiting for?</p><p>Surely you have some ideas. Or maybe you know someone with ideas. I am</p><p>convinced commerce is shifting in some important ways and a lot more</p><p>people are going to be able to participate in a personal way. More people</p><p>are going to want to participate in a more personal way.</p><p>CNC mills, laser cutters, waterjet cutters, 3D printers, 123D Make</p><p>modeling software. What are you waiting for? Some of these tools are</p><p>stunningly easy to use, are a lot of fun, and can add depth to the</p><p>relationships in your life if you use them to create gifts.</p><p>Entrepreneurs, artists, tinkerers, makers, crafters, engineers, architects.</p><p>What do you want to be? Whom do you want to hang out with? What are</p><p>you waiting for?</p><p>Yes. This is a revolution. This book is a manifesto. It can change your</p><p>life. And, yes, I’m inviting you to become a revolutionary.</p><p>STARTUP WEEKEND</p><p>Startup Weekend is a nonprofit organization based in Seattle that creates</p><p>and hosts weekend events where the objective is to pitch ideas to potential</p><p>investors and to have the nascent beginning of a start-up at the end of the</p><p>weekend. The process of setting up a weekend starts a couple of months</p><p>before the event with announcement of the weekend coming to a particular</p><p>city, sponsors being identified, mentors, judges, and angel investors</p><p>recruited, and a small pool of funding made available as prize money.</p><p>A call then goes out for applicants. Most of the applicants are software</p><p>focused, some with a physical product overlay—medical apps, social apps,</p><p>or other such designations. Small teams form and submit a basic proposal.</p><p>The proposal doesn’t have to be well developed; the idea is to help develop</p><p>it during the weekend to a point where a pitch to investors can be made.</p><p>The event organizers then do a quick filter to make sure the highest-quality</p><p>ideas and teams will be included, and then invitations are sent to selected</p><p>applicants. This is a fairly standard approach to these types of boot camps</p><p>and start-up weekends.</p><p>Note that the purpose of these weekends is to find big hits, not lifestyle</p><p>businesses. There is nothing in Startup Week-end’s charter that says it has</p><p>to go for big hits, but because there are angels and committees involved,</p><p>lifestyle businesses really need not apply. So Laura from Yes & Yes, Paul</p><p>Young-blood of One Degree, Jazz Tigan of Hugalopes, and Perrin Lam the</p><p>jeweler need not apply. There really should be startup weekends for these</p><p>kinds of entrepreneurs, too.</p><p>The teams show up on Friday, socialize, get to know one another, meet</p><p>the mentors, and make a short pitch. There is some mix and match that then</p><p>goes on—in the better-run versions, a couple of potentially hard-to-find</p><p>skills are brought in, often identified in the submission process, like</p><p>programmers (there are never enough programmers to go around at these</p><p>events), financial modelers, user interface designers (not enough of them</p><p>either)—and then the break until Saturday morning.</p><p>On Saturday, things start in earnest. Lots of brainstorming, ideas,</p><p>market research, mentor meetings, and coffee. A basic outline of the</p><p>weekend is adhered to with late afternoon or early evening pitches to the</p><p>mentors, some basic mock-ups of the app, product, or service, questions,</p><p>and pushback. All of this is followed by a long night of reworking ideas,</p><p>building mock-ups, and working on the pitches.</p><p>Sunday, if everything has gone well, and it often has not, the idea is</p><p>refined, basic mock-ups are done, and a deck is created to pitch from. Late</p><p>Sunday afternoon, the angels and judges arrive, kibitz a bit, socialize with</p><p>the teams (though not much, because the teams are focused), and then the</p><p>pitches happen. At the close of Sunday, the winners are awarded, angels</p><p>talk to individual teams, and the weekend is wrapped up.</p><p>There are few objectives with this approach. The first, obviously, is to</p><p>identify great ideas and great teams and get them working together on an</p><p>idea. The second is to expose these teams and ideas to angels and other</p><p>entrepreneurs. A third objective is to create interest in the entire idea of</p><p>purposeful innovation, where teams come together specifically to find a</p><p>problem and then solve it. There are other objectives, like exposing</p><p>entrepreneurs to rapid prototyping, exposing budding entrepreneurs to the</p><p>start-up culture, getting local companies, foundations, and governments</p><p>more actively engaged in the local start-up community, and enticing the</p><p>press to cover the local start-up community. But the real idea is to help</p><p>kick-start some start-ups.</p><p>One of the great things about Startup Weekend is that, with the</p><p>Kauffman</p><p>Foundation’s support, the nonprofit has been able to bootstrap</p><p>itself to a place where it now holds hundreds of these weekend events all</p><p>over the globe.</p><p>Another nice thing about this platform is that the restriction of</p><p>accepting only software ideas into the start-up pool is slowly being lifted</p><p>with the recognition that hardware start-ups are getting easier and less</p><p>expensive to fund, develop, and launch.</p><p>Events like these start-up weekends are critical for the development of</p><p>local entrepreneurial talent. Many universities now conduct similar events,</p><p>and some foundations and other sponsors are holding them all over the</p><p>globe.</p><p>OPEN INNOVATION</p><p>I would be remiss not to mention another trend called open innovation.</p><p>Over a decade ago, economist and professor Dr. Eric von Hippel1 of MIT</p><p>wrote a book, Democratizing Innovation, that broke open the discussion on</p><p>the origin of innovative ideas. In this seminal work, von Hippel cited</p><p>studies that he and his graduate students conducted that indicated that over</p><p>half of useful innovations came from heavy users (lead users), not the</p><p>research and development departments or customer insight departments in</p><p>large companies. These weren’t just any old ideas, but actually fully</p><p>functioning modifications to existing products to better meet the users’</p><p>needs. This goes beyond listening to your customers for great ideas, this</p><p>goes to licensing the good ideas your customers have perfected.</p><p>Around the same time, another professor, Dr. Henry Chesbrough, wrote</p><p>Open Innovation.2 This book identified specific pathways that organizations</p><p>could use to engage customers, researchers, and developers outside the</p><p>normal reach of a research and development organization.</p><p>With the proof points from von Hippel and pathways developed by</p><p>Chesbrough, a small group of firms has emerged that help large firms</p><p>systematize the way to bring in ideas. Procter & Gamble embraced these</p><p>ideas early on and has had a number of wins by using the processes.</p><p>DARPA is using these methods to explore how to cut the costs on</p><p>developing major platforms. An online game was even developed by one</p><p>group working on difficult problems around folding proteins. The molecular</p><p>structure of proteins is what makes many drugs work. Proteins are folded</p><p>back on themselves in what looks like knots to the untrained eye. These</p><p>folded proteins in many instances cannot yet be modeled, or solved, by</p><p>computers. But it turns out that some people—special people sometimes</p><p>with no special training, degrees, or background in biomedicine—seem to</p><p>have a knack for visualizing folding patterns in three-dimensional space. So</p><p>by creating a game and tapping the expertise of this particular crowd,</p><p>researchers have been able to solve key protein folding problems in a</p><p>fraction of the time.</p><p>Some of the success of the open innovation, open source, and hardware</p><p>movements is being driven by democratizing access to formerly incredibly</p><p>expensive tools. Open innovation drives down the costs of innovation.</p><p>Because of all these trends, open innovation and open source, along</p><p>with the new cheap access to capabilities, there is an opportunity to remake</p><p>at least a portion of how a company does some of its new product</p><p>development. Innovations no longer should or need to all come out of a</p><p>company’s R&D labs; there are more “lead users” (von Hippel’s term) with</p><p>deeply informed and sometimes patentable ideas out in diaspora than a firm</p><p>will ever be able to employ internally. Creating the on-ramps for these</p><p>outside sources of innovation is critical to the competitive position and</p><p>survival of large firms.</p><p>TOWARD A TWO-WEEK INTERVENTION</p><p>My company has wanted to develop a two-week version of the Start-up</p><p>Weekend for corporations where we spend the first week developing what</p><p>the product should be and the second week launching the product. One way</p><p>of launching would be to use Kickstarter or Indiegogo as the go-to market</p><p>solution. If you can’t get the product funded on the crowdsourcing platform,</p><p>you kill the idea and then try again.</p><p>Imagine a team from a packaged goods company, film studio, or</p><p>clothing company actually funding the development of the business’s</p><p>product through the crowd instead of with a budget from the stage-gated</p><p>new product development process. If the team gets $1 million in orders</p><p>from the campaign, how is the division’s general manager not going to</p><p>listen to the team?</p><p>I’ve proposed that some of these Fortune 500 firms should be launching</p><p>a product a week using this method. It’s cheaper, faster, and more accurate</p><p>than doing traditional marketing activities. This doesn’t necessarily mean</p><p>they need to eliminate the standard new product development process, just</p><p>that it needs to be augmented.</p><p>I feel sorry for the dinosaurs that don’t begin to experiment with these</p><p>new ways of testing and launching products.</p><p>THE FUTURE OF VENTURE CAPITAL</p><p>The current system of venture capital first developed in the 1960s has</p><p>evolved into a focus on home runs. This is to some extent driven by the</p><p>boom and bust nature of the businesses companies are in, the IPO market</p><p>cycles or “window” as it’s called, but to a significant extent it has been the</p><p>result of a series of actions taken by Congress and the SEC (Securities and</p><p>Exchange Commission) to reduce fraud perpetuated by Enron and other</p><p>scandals. The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s rules for auditing added over $1</p><p>million in annual costs for even small firms to comply. As a by-product of</p><p>our fears related to fraud, we have managed to utterly destroy the IPO</p><p>market for companies under $50 million in sales. “Destroy” is not too</p><p>strong a term. There has been a 90 percent reduction in the number of these</p><p>IPOs in the last couple of decades.3 How would you feel if you lost 92</p><p>percent of your food? The U.S. regulatory regime has basically been doing</p><p>that to the American economy—starving it.</p><p>According to a Kauffmann study, all of the new jobs in the U.S.</p><p>economy were produced by start-ups in the last few decades. They call</p><p>them gazelles, very fast start-ups growing quickly. Corporate America</p><p>sheds jobs, merges and cuts jobs, automates and eliminates jobs, and the</p><p>new jobs net are created by start-ups. And we had made it almost</p><p>impossible to fund smallish, interesting start-ups because one of the key</p><p>sources of funding, venture capital, couldn’t get small exits. They have been</p><p>forced to swing for the fences. Basically, if a group can’t tell a VC (venture</p><p>capital) or angel group with a straight face that its idea could be a $1 billion</p><p>exit, they aren’t very interested in it. Even if you show a VC or angel group</p><p>a $100-million-a-year market that, if everything works out, you could</p><p>dominate, it will pass. It’s too risky, and the only exit is through a private</p><p>equity firm or acquisition.</p><p>That changed in 2012. With the passage of the JOBS Act, Sarbanes-</p><p>Oxley was waived for smaller firms. This has yet to play out with the</p><p>venture capital firms, but there is now room for multiple investments where</p><p>the strategy is small hits instead of home runs. Exits are in the $50 million</p><p>to $100 million range. It will take more deals and a different process, but</p><p>this is a potential sea change. And that’s nothing compared to the potential</p><p>tsunami coming from the illumination of advertising for securities.</p><p>JOBS ACT IMPACT ON RAISING MONEY FOR START-</p><p>UPS</p><p>Ever since the early 1930s, companies and individuals in the United States</p><p>have not been allowed to raise money through advertising. The purpose of</p><p>this was to protect investors from losing their money. It successfully cut</p><p>down on the proliferation of scams, but it also put a huge clamp on start-up</p><p>funding. Consequently, liquidity in the market for start-ups dried up.</p><p>I remember the first time I ran into this back in the 1980s. I was trying</p><p>to raise money for a great idea, adding audio capability to computers. I</p><p>asked the attorney for the company I worked with whether I could post the</p><p>idea and raise money on computer bulletin boards. I was pretty sure there</p><p>were plenty of early PC</p><p>geeks who would have loved to invest in the idea. I</p><p>think he laughed at me.</p><p>“You will go to jail if you do that,” he said. I had to use family and</p><p>friends, a bank, or a venture capitalist.</p><p>My friends were all starving students, so I had to use family and their</p><p>friends. I had to go out, get introductions, and meet my potential investors</p><p>face-to-face. This was stunningly inefficient compared to my plan of</p><p>launching a campaign on a bulletin board.</p><p>Well, 30 years later, the federal regulatory regime is finally about to</p><p>join the latter part of the twentieth century. Legislation should have been</p><p>changed by now, and we could have done it and done it well decades ago,</p><p>but at least Congress is getting to it now. At the time of this writing, we are</p><p>waiting for the final rules to be issued. Once they do get issued, we will be</p><p>able to have Kickstarter-like portals for raising capital for start-ups. This</p><p>will be much more efficient than the current process. And if the company is</p><p>raising less than $1 million, it can take a limited amount of money from</p><p>anyone. This could actually change everything for start-ups in the United</p><p>States. The timing is perfect for the Maker Movement. Right as the spread</p><p>of knowledge and hardware tools develops, raising money may become</p><p>easier than it ever has been.</p><p>The traditional approach to funding these small start-ups has been</p><p>family and friends or maybe credit cards, second mortgages, and raiding the</p><p>401(k). But not anymore. If the idea has merit, it is likely to be funded. We</p><p>might even see a lot of local investing going on. You want to start a</p><p>restaurant? Great. Get your friends and family to vouch for you and launch</p><p>your offer online. You can do equity and loans this way. Think about the</p><p>great chefs in various cities who could open their own restaurants if they</p><p>simply had access to the capital they needed. Yes, there are downsides, but</p><p>fear of those downsides has almost totally destroyed entrepreneurial</p><p>opportunity in the United States. Currently, if you don’t have a strong</p><p>balance sheet, income, a rich uncle, or lots of wealthy friends, then there is</p><p>no rung on the ladder for you. You have to go work for the man because</p><p>you aren’t going to get the conservative capital people to fund you—ever.</p><p>It is time to put the twentieth century behind us and use the Internet, the</p><p>crowd, and crowdfunding to find the new winners. Lowering the bar to</p><p>entrepreneurialism is the most liberating, democratizing, and just thing that</p><p>can done for those who are creative, bold, and daring enough to trust their</p><p>talents and try.</p><p>6</p><p>Democratization of Tools and Information</p><p>TOOLS</p><p>Since the beginning of the industrial revolution until fairly recently, the</p><p>most powerful tools of production were centralized. With the advent of</p><p>capitalism and the need to control large sums of money to leverage</p><p>industrialization, many segments of the economy that previously had been</p><p>serviced by individuals began to give way to industrial capitalists. This is</p><p>not a bad thing; huge improvements in lifespan, living conditions,</p><p>workweeks, and lifestyles have resulted from industrialization and</p><p>mechanization. Bad things happened, too, though most of us would not</p><p>trade our era for that of 1850, in which we would likely be farmers with a</p><p>life expectancy of 36.9 years and work 12-hour days in a six-or seven-day</p><p>workweek.</p><p>Until very recently, the tools of creation and production in many fields</p><p>have remained the purview of those with access to capital. In the last 20</p><p>years, however, something very interesting has happened with the</p><p>democratization of computers, computer power, and the Internet. In</p><p>practical terms, the cost of launching a software company has dropped at</p><p>least a couple orders of magnitude. The amazing development of the open</p><p>source software community, where software is free to use, where upgrades</p><p>to the software are required to be shared, and where development is free for</p><p>everyone has been nothing short of revolutionary. With the continued drop</p><p>in the costs of processing, companies are now being created for tens of</p><p>thousands of dollars instead of tens of millions.</p><p>In 2000, during the dot-com craze, I was working as the COO on a</p><p>start-up with a $30 million hardware and software budget before we even</p><p>went live. Today, with the advent of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL,</p><p>and the PHP programming language) stack, now combined with cloud</p><p>computing, where you pay only for the cycles you use, start-ups are getting</p><p>going for $25,000 to $150,000. Not all, of course, but lots. This has</p><p>famously led to an explosion of new web-based companies that have</p><p>changed the way we live, shop, and consume.</p><p>More slowly, the same kind of thing has been happening on the</p><p>hardware side. It has gotten cheaper, more powerful, and easier to use.</p><p>Better, faster, cheaper has jumped to hardware.</p><p>CHEAPER</p><p>The core technology for creating prototypes is the mill and lathe. These are</p><p>hard-core industrial technologies that were rarely seen outside of a</p><p>production facility. Few were in the hands of basic consumers, and they</p><p>cost tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes $100,000. They required three-</p><p>phase power, not something most households had in their garages. They</p><p>required years of use to become expert at and therefore were only used by</p><p>professionals. Then the Japanese came along and wiped out much of the</p><p>capital tool manufacturing base in the United States. The Chinese came in</p><p>behind them and destroyed much of the Japanese base. And now anyone</p><p>can buy a basic mill or lathe for less than $10,000 with a digital readout</p><p>(DRO).</p><p>You see, a few decades ago machine manufacturers started to add</p><p>DROs to these machines to help machinists do their work without having to</p><p>constantly use mechanical measurement devices. These DROs were</p><p>expensive, though—$100,000 each in some cases. But today the machine</p><p>purchaser basically gets them free. So, a $10,000 mill today comes with</p><p>what would have been a $100,000 DRO not long ago.</p><p>POWERFUL</p><p>Starting in the mid-1950s, thanks to some work at MIT, we saw the</p><p>development of computer numerical controlled (CNC) machines. These</p><p>could read digital code and control the cutting tool directly with minimal</p><p>human intervention. This is truly an amazing development and has led to</p><p>what is being described as “lights out manufacturing.” A CNC tool doesn’t</p><p>need light to see. It just does what the computer code tells it to do. Nothing</p><p>more, nothing less. I’m skipping over a lot of development work here, but</p><p>the reality is that you can now deploy dozens of machines, working 24-7,</p><p>creating thousands of things with minimal inputs of labor. The Chinese are</p><p>far more concerned about the impact of robotics on their labor advantage</p><p>than they are about companies shifting production to India or Vietnam.</p><p>CNC robots change the nature of production profoundly. Again, there</p><p>has been a huge drop in prices and an incredible improvement in ease of</p><p>use. As recently as 2000, a basic CNC software seat could run $100,000. In</p><p>addition, a machinist would have had to learn how to program in G-code, an</p><p>esoteric system for controlling a cutting edge in three-dimensional space, as</p><p>well as know geometry and some calculus, and then go through a solid six</p><p>months of training on the software to become good at it. Consequently, a</p><p>couple of years of training or time at a trade school were still required in</p><p>order to use these tools effectively. But now, it’s possible to purchase stand-</p><p>alone packages for $1,500 or so. And the more popular packages are</p><p>typically bundled with the machine for free.</p><p>CNC tools would run hundreds of thousands of dollars and require</p><p>years of experience and training to be useful. Now they are much cheaper;</p><p>anyone can get them for about $20,000, and a very nice entry-level, multi-</p><p>tool-changing machine from Haas sells for under $50,000 brand new. Just</p><p>as important, these machines have become easier to use.</p><p>EASY</p><p>Now for the magic: software to do it all. Inexpensive or free design</p><p>software from Autodesk and other providers now allows</p><p>novices to</p><p>leverage the power of the industrial revolution with their personal computer,</p><p>something they already own. Even better, they can begin to learn how to use</p><p>these tools this week. At TechShop, we are teaching the basics of these</p><p>tools in a few class sessions and then watching our members go out on the</p><p>machines and make useful things. This is stunning. We run people through</p><p>their own industrial revolution in weeks instead of years or decades. They</p><p>are using these newfound tools to completely remake themselves—and, in</p><p>some instances, take on large Fortune 500 companies head to head.</p><p>IMPLICATIONS</p><p>Cheap and powerful drive revolutions; cheap, powerful, and easy to</p><p>democratize them. As a new product development professional, I know that</p><p>all large firms have the equivalent of a stage-gated new product</p><p>development process. They have anywhere from a low of 5 stages to a high</p><p>of 20 or more stages. I ran one with 7:</p><p>1. Cloud of possibilities. This included exploration, futures work,</p><p>patent tracking, and benchmarking. It was formless and nebulous</p><p>and hated.</p><p>2. Ideation. Out of the cloud of external and internal ideas, one comes</p><p>up with long lists of things that might or could be made.</p><p>3. Screening. There has to be a filter against which you bounce the</p><p>ideas.</p><p>4. Research. Ask questions like, is there a market, can it be made</p><p>using existing technology, what else is needed, should we do this?</p><p>5. Development. Develop preproduction prototypes for testing,</p><p>refinement, market research, and beta customer feedback.</p><p>6. Manufacturing. Build and sell the product or service.</p><p>7. Analysis and feedback. The most commonly forgotten part of the</p><p>process—analyze what have we learned.</p><p>To send an idea through this entire process took months, sometimes</p><p>years, and usually cost millions of dollars. It is stage-gated in that at every</p><p>step there is a formal review and a go/no-go decision. We added a few</p><p>innovative twists, we had a rapid development track, we had some people</p><p>with resurrection power (the ability to fund something killed outside the</p><p>normal channels), and we had a general manager who could even pull a</p><p>rabbit out of his hat by fully funding an entire cycle inside of one fiscal</p><p>year, thereby creating something out of nothing by burying development in</p><p>a sales budget and skipping the entire process (this is not for the faint of</p><p>heart). To the uninitiated, it sounds crazy, but it is necessary. Entire books</p><p>have been written on the process, PhDs have been awarded; a large</p><p>organization with the acronym of PDMA (Product Development</p><p>Management Association) is dedicated to it.</p><p>This is what the software development cycle looked like back in the</p><p>days of the mainframe. This is not how a lot of software is developed today.</p><p>Some still is—operating systems from Microsoft, for example. Major</p><p>upgrades to Word or PowerPoint require lots of work, lots of meetings, lots</p><p>of features, and debates on what shade of loam green to use and how tightly</p><p>spaced an apostrophe should be from an s.</p><p>But that isn’t how Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram were launched, for</p><p>two basic reasons. The first is cost. If there isn’t a lot at risk, you don’t need</p><p>big teams costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars reviewing</p><p>every decision. Building a software company doesn’t take much of anything</p><p>now. Today, even Facebook would only cost a fraction of what it cost when</p><p>it was launched.</p><p>Second, these start-ups were being driven by an end-user entrepreneur.</p><p>End-user entrepreneurs don’t need or use stage-gated review processes to</p><p>launch their products. They use themselves or a small group in their</p><p>“kitchen cabinet” to guide development. This saves an incredible amount of</p><p>time and money.</p><p>Some important things start to happen when you can seed a software</p><p>company for $25,000. First, you can take more bets, however unlikely. If</p><p>one needed $500,000 to $1,000,000 in 2005 to fund a start-up and $5</p><p>million to $50 million in 2000, there were just plain fewer bets made. For</p><p>the cost to bet on one idea in 2000, you can now make hundreds of bets.</p><p>This is why we are seeing an explosion of mobile, social, and gaming app</p><p>development in nearly every incubator in the world. And now there are</p><p>incubators, it seems, in nearly every city in the world. If your city doesn’t</p><p>have an incubator, start one. It’s cheaper than it has ever been, and everyone</p><p>is doing it. Even phone companies are now starting incubators. It’s a little</p><p>crazy, as most incubators have failed. However, failing is getting cheaper,</p><p>so the risk-to-reward ratio is turning in the favor of the incubators.</p><p>Another important thing to note is that we are still in the early days of</p><p>the mobile computer and smartphone ecosystem. So there is more</p><p>opportunity today to start a company, there are fewer entrenched</p><p>competitors, and there is more experimentation happening than ever before.</p><p>This is all good for creating early wins.</p><p>But that is software. I’m interested in hardware. Here is the magic: I</p><p>mentioned in an earlier chapter that the same thing that has enabled the</p><p>explosion of software incubators is starting to happen on the hardware side.</p><p>Access to the tools of the industrial revolution is increasing, the costs of</p><p>designing and developing product are dropping, the knowledge and skill</p><p>required to design are dropping, the ability to access markets through the</p><p>Internet has never been easier, and the funding mechanisms are becoming</p><p>easier to access through places like AngelList (https://angel.co) Indiegogo,</p><p>and Kickstarter. We have begun to see a significant uptick in incubator</p><p>start-ups being hardware companies—from essentially zero a few years ago</p><p>to 15 to 20 percent of them today.</p><p>We will talk about Local Motion in a later chapter, but it is an example</p><p>of a hardware-focused start-up.</p><p>I haven’t met Paul Youngblood yet, but he works out of our San Jose</p><p>location. He is an award-winning designer by training, I would guess in his</p><p>late twenties to early thirties. Paul recently successfully completed a</p><p>Kickstarter campaign to start a watch company. He needed $15,000 and</p><p>pulled in more than $25,000. I bought one of his watches during his</p><p>campaign, a One Degree (his brand name) “I left my heart in San</p><p>Francisco” watch. It is beautiful. Paul used 3D printing technology to do all</p><p>the modeling, the laser cutter to make some templates, and other machines</p><p>to get his design exactly the way he wanted it. He bought the movements</p><p>from a Swiss movement company and the components from China, and</p><p>then he assembled the watches, packaging and shipping them himself on</p><p>our tables in San Jose. Paul now plans to offer the watches more broadly</p><p>and will begin working on an “I Love NY” line.</p><p>A decade ago, it was not possible to start a designer watch company for</p><p>$25,000. No one is likely to get an angel group or venture capital company</p><p>to fund a watch company. Yet for a mere $25,000 Paul Youngblood started,</p><p>launched, and delivered the first 100 watches from his new company.</p><p>How did he do it? He had a big leg up as he was a watch producer to</p><p>begin with, but the real key was access to designer software, Autodesk</p><p>Inventor, and the tools, 3D printers, lasers, mills, and lathes, combined with</p><p>a supply chain reaching out to China and Switzerland that was ready,</p><p>willing, and able to deal with units as low as 100. He had access to the</p><p>hardware platform he needed to get started. With social media like</p><p>Facebook and Twitter and a crowdfunding platform of Kick-starter or</p><p>Indiegogo, he was off and running. He didn’t need to use his credit card to</p><p>get started. He used the wisdom of the crowds, his skills, and a</p><p>makerspace’s hardware platform.</p><p>It is hard to overestimate the importance of access to tools. The early</p><p>adherents of Marx were tradespeople and unions that were seeing the</p><p>balance of power shifting from them to those who could afford industrial</p><p>machine tools. It was a bloody time. But people felt so strongly about</p><p>having personal access to tools that they supported the insanity that became</p><p>the social and political oppression</p><p>of communism. As it turns out, the</p><p>medicine in this instance was worse than the disease, but let me restate what</p><p>I just said: People died to try to maintain their personal access to the tools</p><p>of production.</p><p>I like to say that I grade our Dream Consultants on how well they lead</p><p>tours of our facilities. I don’t actually grade them, but it is instructive to</p><p>remind them of how important those tours are to our visitors. So they get a</p><p>C if someone signs up for a class or becomes a member after a tour. With</p><p>the exception of those from out of town who are just touring the facility</p><p>because they love the idea of it (almost half of our tours are currently for</p><p>out-of-towners—we should probably open a restaurant and bar!), most folks</p><p>who walk through the door for a tour are predisposed to buy something.</p><p>They have taken time for a 15-to 20-minute tour of a fabrication studio.</p><p>They want something. Staff members get a B if they get a hug from the total</p><p>stranger that they just met and spent 15 minutes with. Even if you are not a</p><p>“huggy” person—and I am not a huggy person—you will end up giving</p><p>(and getting) a lot of hugs. Most tours end with a B.</p><p>So, how do you get an A following a TechShop tour? You bring tears to</p><p>the eyes of the visitor. This happens all the time.</p><p>Imagine that you just received your master’s degree in art or</p><p>mechanical engineering. After a decade of effort through high school,</p><p>college, and graduate school, you have been working diligently in the</p><p>schools’ labs, studios, and work spaces on projects that were dictated to you</p><p>at some level—and then, when you are finally getting good at what you’ve</p><p>been doing, you graduate, they give you a diploma, and they take away</p><p>access to the very labs that lift your spirits every day. You are sent out into</p><p>the world to ply your trade—without the tools to do it. You are lost without</p><p>tools. So, you get a job to either fund your need for tools or as a</p><p>professional in your field meaning that you “get” to continue to work on</p><p>stuff that other people think is important. Imagine the wonderful day you</p><p>find a membership-based workshop that charges about three dollars a day,</p><p>less than the cost of a single class for a single semester at most universities</p><p>in the United States, and you take a tour with someone who is as passionate</p><p>about making things as you are. Yes, you would likely tear up too.</p><p>I’m still not very comfortable giving hugs, but I’ve stopped fighting</p><p>them. The breakthrough came one day when our team was in Vancouver,</p><p>British Columbia, a few years ago. We had given a presentation to a group</p><p>about what we were doing and why we thought it was so important. One of</p><p>the people in the audience insisted on taking us to lunch so he could have</p><p>his wife come downtown and meet us. So we went out to lunch. His wife</p><p>came, and we talked at length about what we were doing and about access</p><p>to tools, community, and information. As we were getting ready to leave,</p><p>the wife, with tears in her eyes, insisted on hugging each of us. She</p><p>implored us to keep fighting and to extend the reach of the platform.</p><p>It was not the first time this had happened to me, but it was just so</p><p>startling. I didn’t know these people, had never met them before, and in just</p><p>30 minutes we had gotten to the place where one of them was ready to cry</p><p>for joy. Maybe physicians deal with this, and I should start to wear a white</p><p>lab coat to fend people off with. No, I’ve stopped fighting hugs. Yes, people</p><p>do cry when you tell them they can have access to the tools, information,</p><p>and community they need to pursue and achieve their dreams.</p><p>OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE</p><p>The open source hardware effort is driving down the costs of the hardware.</p><p>Arduino is probably the most famous of the efforts; the founders have</p><p>become minicelebrities in the maker community. Arduino is an open source</p><p>community for the development, extension, and improvement of an open</p><p>microcontroller platform. What this means is that no one has the exclusive</p><p>rights or owns the intellectual property for the platform. It is given away. It</p><p>is owned by everyone and no one.</p><p>A microcontroller is a silicon chip that can be programmed to control</p><p>things like sensors, switches, and other devices. It is a combination of</p><p>software and hardware, and its development is shepherded by the</p><p>community. If you use it and extend its functionality, you are required to</p><p>document that functionality and donate that intellectual property back to the</p><p>Arduino community.</p><p>Because it is not owned by anyone, developers who work on the project</p><p>are coding and developing for the good of the community and their</p><p>reputations in the community. Lots of developers have jumped on board.</p><p>One of the benefits is that the software is free and the hardware is cheap.</p><p>This makes it one of the cheapest platforms on which to develop prototypes.</p><p>Also, by design, the software is relatively easy to learn. On the down side,</p><p>there is a lot of “overhead” or bulk to using this kind of general</p><p>microcontroller for prototyping, and even though an Arduino board may</p><p>only cost $30 or so, a truly inexpensive, specifically designed</p><p>microcontroller chip can cost just pennies. But you have to be able to code</p><p>it in assembly language or some other low-level (read harder to program)</p><p>language.</p><p>One of the things that makes the Arduino so cool is that it is easy to use</p><p>and it is supported by a huge community of people who have shared their</p><p>projects. So you can download code and plans for robots, planes, remote</p><p>controlled vehicles, drones, sprinkler controllers. The list is almost endless.</p><p>Another great thing is that the Arduino platform lowers the barrier to</p><p>prototyping, so someone who is not a software programming expert can</p><p>code something up from scratch even though he or she may not be a</p><p>microcontrol programmer by training. Tech-Shop’s Radio Frequency</p><p>Identification (RFID) system was prototyped by our founder in a couple of</p><p>weeks on an Arduino board. We use it for checking out machines and</p><p>getting into the shop. Once we had the functionality we wanted, we moved</p><p>the RFID system to a PIC processor, which is much cheaper to deploy (and</p><p>harder to program) than Arduino’s.</p><p>Open source hardware is truly huge. With a little bit of effort and</p><p>training, you can make your own electronic things. And you don’t need</p><p>$100,000 of design software, manufacturing experience, or years of</p><p>dedicated software training. If you don’t want to develop using the Arduino</p><p>platform, it’s possible to hire people for a reasonable rate to do the work for</p><p>you, and they don’t need to support hundreds of thousands of dollars of</p><p>infrastructure costs. Arduino-based prototypes are also easy to change.</p><p>They are fully programmable. So if the first effort doesn’t work, you just</p><p>keep hacking at the code until the device does what you want it to do.</p><p>Chris Anderson, formerly editor in chief of Wired magazine, quit his</p><p>job to run his Arduino-based DIY drone company. For over a decade, he</p><p>was arguably the leading commentator of the Internet, and he wrote a book,</p><p>The Long Tail (which I mentioned in Chapter 3), that is probably the most</p><p>important book about the impact of the Internet. He has been writing for</p><p>over a decade about the stunning revolution that is the Internet and has</p><p>written another book, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution.</p><p>Here is why I mention him: Chris Anderson quit his job to participate</p><p>in the “new” revolution. He was not satisfied observing this revolution; he</p><p>wanted to participate. In a recent talk at the Long Now Foundation titled</p><p>“The Makers Revolution,”1 he said, “If you thought the web was big, I</p><p>think this [the new maker revolution] is going to be bigger.” Again, this is</p><p>from the number one chronicler of the Internet.</p><p>How could he say that? Think about it. The web is virtual. Admittedly,</p><p>the virtual consumes more and more of my time, but all of my time is</p><p>physical. Even when I’m online, I’m using a computer, phone, or tablet. I’m</p><p>sitting in a chair, train, plane, or automobile. The web changed markets,</p><p>sales, communication, democracy,</p><p>politics, and more, but web was achieved</p><p>through a screen. This new revolution is about materials, tools, physical</p><p>communities, and bricks and mortar—the real world, or “RL” in Dungeons</p><p>and Dragons gamer speak. RL is bigger and will always be bigger than the</p><p>web. And access to RL is getting cheaper and easier. That is very big news</p><p>indeed.</p><p>COMMUNITIES</p><p>At TechShop, we keep getting asked whether we have a virtual community</p><p>of makers collaborating. We don’t. We will someday. But we have</p><p>something better. We have an actual physical community of makers</p><p>exchanging ideas and working together. In a makerspace, you are two</p><p>degrees of freedom away from success. That means you know someone</p><p>(first degree) who knows someone (second degree) who can help you solve</p><p>your current problem. Often, right now, and right where you are. Not a</p><p>Google search, not e-mail, help, chat, or virtual assistance. This person can</p><p>introduce you to another person who can come right next to you, someone</p><p>who is ready, willing, and able to guide your hands.</p><p>We have found that something magical happens after about 300 people</p><p>join a makerspace. Before that threshold, people come to the space because</p><p>they have to use a tool in the space to get their project done. After about</p><p>300 members, the vibe in the community is so powerful that the mentality</p><p>of the members switches such that they want to work on their projects in</p><p>that space even if they don’t need to use the tools. It becomes a true</p><p>community where people help one another, care for one another, and hang</p><p>out and socialize. It becomes a true third place. A place that isn’t home or</p><p>work, but a place where one can unwind, relax, and pursue a passion with</p><p>like-minded creative people.</p><p>RESULTS</p><p>Max Gunawan became a TechShop member in 2012. He immediately</p><p>started taking classes, including three different laser cutter classes in just a</p><p>couple of months. Max is a designer by trade, so he comes to a makerspace</p><p>with many basic skills already. All members bring some kind of assets with</p><p>them when they look to launch their next thing. Max had worked at the Gap</p><p>in its merchandising design group.</p><p>Max was inspirited by what he saw other members doing with their</p><p>new access to tools, software, and the community, and he started to work on</p><p>a unique lamp idea that he had.</p><p>By using the laser cutter to carve out sections of thin veneer wood, it is</p><p>possible make what looks like a book cover. The spine is carved up to allow</p><p>it to fold and bend over without stressing the wood. It is beautiful. With this</p><p>basic design, Max began to experiment with paper substitutes to go inside</p><p>the “book cover” that would create a nice glow when lit from behind. He</p><p>eventually settled on Tyvek, a recyclable, translucent, durable plastic made</p><p>by DuPont. Max glued the sheets of Tyvek together to make a fanlike</p><p>structure that opens up when you open the cover.</p><p>Having signed up for a basic soldering class, Max was able to construct</p><p>a simple on/off switch so that the lamp turns on when the “book” is opened.</p><p>He sourced an LED light, a lithium ion battery, and then added some</p><p>magnets, hidden into the cover, so that by using a supplied cord (with</p><p>another magnet in it), the lamp can be easily hung or attached to the side of</p><p>anything metal. This feature falls into the “customer surprise” category and</p><p>is a wonderful touch.</p><p>Max has been working on his concept for months. He has leveraged the</p><p>space nicely and used the access to the tools, the software, and the</p><p>community well. The platform has enabled him to plug the gaps in his</p><p>background (by taking classes and exchanging ideas with others in the</p><p>community) and allowed him to build the prototypes himself for a nominal</p><p>cost and use the software for design and actual manufacturing of the first</p><p>short runs.</p><p>I met Max just a few weeks before his Kickstarter campaign. As he</p><p>showed me his design, we talked about what a successful crowdfunding</p><p>effort looked like and discussed his initial target of $60,000. That’s actually</p><p>pretty high for a crowdfunding effort. Current common wisdom is to target</p><p>something around $4,000.</p><p>Max was adamant, though, having done his research on costs for each</p><p>component in the right volumes to meet his price targets. He needed</p><p>$60,000. Well, he funded that in the first day. With 10 days left, he hit</p><p>$400,000, and he finished his campaign with $578,000.</p><p>When you combine cheap, easy, and powerful tools with the</p><p>community, knowledge, and the desire to innovate, great new products are</p><p>developed by amazing people. Dan and Roy Sandberg were two of</p><p>TechShop’s earliest members, joining in late 2006. They spent the next few</p><p>years developing and perfecting their remote controlled video conferencing</p><p>robot. The brothers did everything themselves, from the wiring harnesses</p><p>and the electronics, including the gyros that controlled its balance, to the</p><p>video conferencing software, power control, remote control software,</p><p>mechanical engineering, and even the vacuum formed plastic enclosures.</p><p>They were at the shop almost every day, working away on this</p><p>breakthrough video conferencing program.</p><p>Walking down one of the halls, I met them for the first time when a</p><p>five-foot-tall thingy came around the corner looking like a cross between a</p><p>music stand, a Segway base, and a computer screen. On the screen was</p><p>Dan’s face. “Hi, I’m Dan,” said Dan’s disembodied face.</p><p>“Well, this isn’t Dan,” the disembodied face continued, “but I am . . .”</p><p>He tried to explain the obvious, but confused it just a little bit more anyway.</p><p>“Hi, I’m Mark,” I responded. “What is this thing?”</p><p>“It’s a remote controlled video conference platform,” Dan’s voice said.</p><p>“We call it the Giraffe because it has a really long neck. I’m controlling it</p><p>from the room next door, but I could control it from anywhere there is an</p><p>Internet connection.”</p><p>At a loss for words, I just said, “Cool.”</p><p>It isn’t often you get to peer into a future a good 5, 10, or 15 years in</p><p>advance, but it was obvious to me that I was doing just that.</p><p>The idea is simple: a device that you can control remotely, that runs a</p><p>continuous video stream so you can roam around an office or factory on</p><p>your own.</p><p>When I learned that Roy and Dan were working to keep the price point</p><p>down to $5,000, I was stunned. I had heard of systems like this that were</p><p>selling for $200,000. At the price point they were trying reach, they would</p><p>be ubiquitous. Every office would want to have one to let remote workers</p><p>“show up” to work. I quickly concluded that somewhere in the future,</p><p>someone was going to have a meeting in which most, but not all, of the</p><p>people “at” the meeting would be present through one of these robots. I</p><p>haven’t seen that yet, but it is only a matter of time.</p><p>At $5,000 apiece, I would have easily snuck 10 to 20 of these things</p><p>into Avery Dennison when I worked there. With manufacturing plants and</p><p>offices spread over 60 locations or more, having machines that executives,</p><p>engineers, and HR folks could log into and drive around remotely would</p><p>have been amazing. I remember one meeting in which a senior executive</p><p>dispatched a team to Europe to find out about some issue, get it resolved,</p><p>and get back within the week to report what happened. Imagine if they</p><p>would have been able to walk away from that meeting, log into a squad of</p><p>Giraffes, and start working right away. I’ll bet they and their families would</p><p>have been happier as well.</p><p>Dan and Roy eventually received a grant from a European agency to</p><p>test the use of the Giraffe to help deliver low-level elderly care. In major</p><p>cities, it turns out that a nurse can spend half his or her time commuting</p><p>from one location to another. If this device could be used to eliminate much</p><p>if not all the driving, what would the impact be on the quality of the care</p><p>both quantitatively and qualitatively? Often, innovations need that one</p><p>application (the killer app for PCs was, famously, the spreadsheet) that will</p><p>get them going, and this application (healthcare) seemed like a good one to</p><p>the brothers—and they didn’t have to give</p><p>up ownership because it was a</p><p>grant. They jumped on the opportunity, moved to Europe, and I didn’t see</p><p>them again for at least 18 months.</p><p>When I saw Dan at the end of 2012, I asked him how it was going. He</p><p>said great, that they had sold their company and he was taking a sabbatical</p><p>—for five years.</p><p>7</p><p>Rise of the Pro-Am</p><p>HUGALOPES</p><p>“Hi, Jazz,” I said as I hit the top floor in our San Francisco location. I had</p><p>met Jazz Tigan the previous month and had seen him just a week earlier</p><p>working on a project.</p><p>Then I noticed he was in a leg cast. “Wow, what happened? How are</p><p>you doing?”</p><p>“Well, Mark . . . actually . . . not so good. I had car problems on</p><p>Monday, so I pulled out the bike yesterday to get here—and got hit by a car</p><p>and broke my leg.”</p><p>“Oh, no. That’s a tough way to start any week!”</p><p>“Now I have to take the subway,” he continued. “It stops just a couple</p><p>of blocks away but, ouch, my arms are really sore from using these</p><p>crutches.” He paused. “But, hey, let me tell you about my project!”</p><p>Right in front of my eyes, Jazz’s demeanor completely transformed. He</p><p>went from discussing what I suspect will be one of the worst weeks of his</p><p>life to a fully engaged and excited human about to share something special.</p><p>Jazz is remarkable. I couldn’t, however, get my mind off the car that hit him</p><p>and broke his leg. I mean, this is California, where people sue one another</p><p>practically for breathing.</p><p>“OK, OK, OK . . . uh, I’m working on my tagline. What do you think</p><p>of this?” Jazz looked at me expectantly, a puppy-dog-like face eager for</p><p>approval. “It’s . . . a Mr. Potato Head for your . . . head!”</p><p>Silence.</p><p>Stunned silence.</p><p>This was bad on at least three levels. First, “Mr. Potato Head” is</p><p>someone else’s brand. You can’t use someone else’s brand in your tagline;</p><p>you’ll get sued, especially in California. Second, the visual image is not</p><p>pretty. Have you seen Mr. Potato Head? This is a guy only Mrs. Potato</p><p>Head could love. Third, if you are looking to make some quick money, I</p><p>was thinking to myself, sue the driver. You know, the driver of the car that</p><p>hit you and broke your leg.</p><p>Undaunted by my lack of enthusiasm for his tag line, Jazz added, “All</p><p>right, follow me. I’ll show you.”</p><p>Hobbling to the fabric table where I could see a small mountain of very</p><p>loud, brightly colored, furry fabric, Jazz set his crutches aside. Sneaking a</p><p>look over his shoulder at me with an enthusiastic, “You are going to love</p><p>this, I know it,” he buried his head in the mountain of fur.</p><p>Just as quickly, Jazz whirled around, a furry monster with googly</p><p>eyeballs, an enormous horn, and big red lips sitting askance on his head.</p><p>Dangling around Jazz’s shoulders were long, skinny, bright green, furry</p><p>arms with mitten-like hands. Slipping his fingers into the gangly</p><p>puppet/monster hat’s hands, Jazz raised one and waved at me. In a childlike</p><p>voice, he said, “Hi, Mark . . . Hiiiii, Maaaaark.”</p><p>Sue the driver. That’s the first thing that came into my head. Even after</p><p>decades of new product training and experience where I know I’m not the</p><p>customer (this is, like, rule number one for product managers: You are</p><p>highly unlikely to be the perfect customer for the product you are</p><p>developing. That is why we have human-centered design research, user</p><p>groups, etc.), it is still hard not to viscerally react to a product or service.</p><p>“Let me show you how it works.” Jazz switched to his normal voice.</p><p>“You see here, inside, I have a patent-pending appliqué design so you can</p><p>change out any of the parts. The eyes, ears, nose, arms, and horns can all be</p><p>mixed and matched, just like Mr. Potato Head. I took the introduction to the</p><p>patenting class you guys hold and filed a provisional patent. Then I used the</p><p>red patent phone upstairs that you guys have set up to call the patent office</p><p>to talk to my patent examiner, who told me he thought I could get a patent</p><p>for my idea.”</p><p>I was impressed. If you have a patent on something like this, I thought,</p><p>you might actually be onto something, even if I wouldn’t be caught dead in</p><p>one.</p><p>“Next, I’m going to launch a Kickstarter campaign and see if I can raise</p><p>enough money to go to the New York Toy Fair.”</p><p>Going to the New York Toy Fair is another great idea; all the buyers</p><p>from around the world show up, and if something is going to sell, it will sell</p><p>there first.</p><p>“How much are you trying to raise?” I asked.</p><p>Jazz calculated that in order to cover the cost of the booth, materials,</p><p>and “everything on the cheap,” he and his partner needed to raise $8,500 on</p><p>Kickstarter by selling early versions. “I’m going to launch next week.</p><p>Would you tweet it when it comes out?”</p><p>“Of course,” I said. “I would be glad to.” It took all my self-control not</p><p>to shake my head in dismay. A furry-monster-hat Mr. Potato Head? Jazz</p><p>was doomed, I thought to myself.</p><p>I was wrong.</p><p>Jazz launched his Kickstarter campaign with his partner, Maricriz</p><p>Perea, and they raised $21,000, far exceeding their $8,500 target. They went</p><p>to the toy fair, met a bunch of people and companies, and licensed the</p><p>product, which they dubbed Hugalopes, to Jakks Pacific, a top-five toy</p><p>manufacturer.</p><p>Puppet Monsters, as the furry Hugalopes have come to be called, are</p><p>sold through TV advertising, the “As Seen on TV” site, and the web for</p><p>$19.95. I haven’t seen Jazz recently, but I’m glad I kept my thoughts to</p><p>myself and encouraged him to pursue his dream. I bought three for</p><p>Christmas presents; they were big hits.</p><p>SQUARE</p><p>As we were moving into our second corporate location in San Francisco, as</p><p>part the 5M Project, our founder Jim Newton told me that he was pretty</p><p>sure that Square, the peer-to-peer merchant banking start-up started by Jack</p><p>Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, had started at our location in Menlo Park. I</p><p>wasn’t so sure, as I had my office there as well and didn’t remember seeing</p><p>Jack Dorsey or Jim McKelvey on site. A quick review of our customer</p><p>relationship manager (CRM) confirmed that, in fact, Jim McKelvey had</p><p>been a member and taken some classes. Since then I’ve met Jim and heard</p><p>Jack talk about our role in helping them launch.</p><p>There are some important lessons, I believe, to be learned from their</p><p>journey. But first let’s provide some background information. Jim</p><p>McKelvey had spent the last 10 years running a successful glassblowing</p><p>studio in St. Louis. It is a personal passion and interest of his and some</p><p>friends. He had also had some great success with his interactive software</p><p>media publishing company. Actually, that is where he and Jack had met.</p><p>Jack had worked for him as an intern before going on to become an Internet</p><p>titan through launching Twitter. But this is what is interesting, at least to</p><p>this start-up junky:</p><p>Jim lost a commission on a beautiful custom faucet because he couldn’t</p><p>take American Express. He had been working with a woman in Latin</p><p>America on a special design and lost the sale at the last minute because he</p><p>couldn’t take the right form of credit. He and Jack were friends and had</p><p>been looking for a project to collaborate on.</p><p>Their idea was to use a smartphone and its platform as the</p><p>communications and processing platform to initiate and conduct credit card</p><p>purchases. This was an innovative idea, potentially very disruptive. They</p><p>pulled together a presentation and, leveraging Jack’s contacts in Silicon</p><p>Valley, met with a handful of the top VC firms. They got absolutely</p><p>nowhere—even with a social media genius opening the doors. But put</p><p>yourself in the VC’s shoes. Here were two young entrepreneurs, a coder</p><p>(successful, but still a code jockey) and a glassblower, trying to convince</p><p>potential investors that they were going to take on Wells Fargo, Chase, and</p><p>Bank of America and target a segment of the market that none of the banks</p><p>were interested in, namely, low-volume, higher-risk, mom-and-pop</p><p>lemonade stands. They were turned down flat.</p><p>Jack and Jim didn’t give up. They decided they needed to build a</p><p>prototype. Jack wanted to use the camera on an iPhone to capture the</p><p>number and name, while Jim felt it would be too hard to control for the</p><p>light and would create a semi-permanent record of a card and that it would</p><p>be better to develop a simple magnetic stripe reader. Jim’s design won out,</p><p>and it is actually a nice hack. Apple doesn’t give out an API for its</p><p>connector to the phone, but the microphone jack could be hacked to capture</p><p>the simple magnetic stripe tones to grab a credit card’s name and account</p><p>number.</p><p>Jim came into our Menlo Park location, took a couple of classes, and in</p><p>a matter of months had gone through three full generations of prototypes.</p><p>Jack focused on the code. Then they rescheduled meetings with some VCs</p><p>in the Valley. This is the coolest part of the story: The two walked into the</p><p>meeting with a fully functional prototype. They asked for the VC’s personal</p><p>credit card, ran it through their system, raised their first $500 doing</p><p>demonstrations, and then famously never gave the money back. Jack and</p><p>Jim raised a $10 million series A off the strength of the demonstration</p><p>prototype. According to Michael Arrington on CrunchBase, Square was</p><p>valued at “a massive $40 million or more after raising $10 million in</p><p>funding, and the service is yet to launch publicly for anyone to use.”1</p><p>At the time of this writing, Square had a $3.25 billion market valuation</p><p>and has raised over $300 million in capital. The company employs 400</p><p>people in downtown San Francisco and at the end of 2012 was running at</p><p>an annualized rate of $6 billion in transactions. Square is rumored to be</p><p>hiring 700 more people in 2013 and will do more than $30 billion in</p><p>transactions.</p><p>Starbucks just signed up as a user and distributor of the Square devices.</p><p>I see television commercials for them when I turn on the TV. Most</p><p>important, Square destroyed the huge barriers to entry that the merchant</p><p>banks had raised to deny entrepreneurs from accepting credit cards. Besides</p><p>charging less than most of the merchant banks, Square dropped all the crazy</p><p>requirements.</p><p>The last time I had a credit card terminal, I had to pay $125 a month for</p><p>the “privilege” of renting a terminal so that my bank could extract 3.75</p><p>percent of every transaction—and on major transactions where the bank</p><p>determined there might be a higher risk, it would charge me more. To get</p><p>that terminal, I had to provide three years of financials, demonstrate a clean</p><p>credit history, and have a strong balance sheet.</p><p>As a direct result of these kinds of fees, charges, and paperwork,</p><p>vendors at local swap meets would not and could not take credit cards, nor</p><p>could most independent taxi drivers, many bakers, cleaners, or anyone who</p><p>had experienced a financial crisis in the last three years. Jack Dorsey and</p><p>Jim McKelvey busted open the merchant banking oligopoly and let anyone</p><p>with a smartphone and checking account take plastic. There are now</p><p>literally lemonade stands that take plastic. And why not?</p><p>Let me replay this story more succinctly. A glassblower (successful and</p><p>a smart entrepreneur, but a glassblower nonetheless) and a thirtysomething</p><p>code jockey CEO created a multibillion-dollar merchant bank in three</p><p>years, took on the largest financial institutions in the world, and crushed</p><p>them. But it worked only because they had a fully functional prototype.</p><p>Don’t lose that. Jack was turned down until he had a prototype. If you don’t</p><p>have a prototype, good luck.</p><p>PRO-AM</p><p>These two very different examples, Hugalopes and Square, share some</p><p>interesting characteristics. An important one is that neither set of</p><p>entrepreneurs was an industry player in the industry being targeted. Jazz</p><p>had never licensed a toy before, and Jack and Jim had zero experience in</p><p>merchant banking. I met someone recently who had been at an early Square</p><p>road-show for banking industry players. She told me that more than half of</p><p>those in attendance clearly didn’t think Jim and Jack had a prayer of</p><p>succeeding. Some did, but most did not. They were pro-ams, very talented</p><p>amateurs getting ready to go professional in their field, but very definitely</p><p>not professionals. Neither had any domain expertise whatsoever. You don’t</p><p>expect an amateur to win big, but sometimes they do.</p><p>Both of these instances are examples of the triumph of the amateur. You</p><p>can’t stay an amateur, but just because you are not an industry player</p><p>doesn’t rule you out.</p><p>Jazz, Jack, and Jim learned the skills they needed as they went along—</p><p>just-in-time skills and knowledge in product and business development.</p><p>Elon Musk has been doing the same thing for his entire career as the</p><p>cofounder of the money-transfer service PayPal; founder, product architect,</p><p>and CEO of Tesla Motors, the electric car company; and founder of the</p><p>rocket ship company SpaceX. He has always been an industry outsider who</p><p>climbs whatever steep mountains of knowledge are needed for each</p><p>venture. Very few of the industry players in either domain would have bet</p><p>on Elon. He may still fail, but his companies have come a long way, and his</p><p>products are on the road and in outer space.</p><p>The distance between what a professional is and what an amateur is has</p><p>clearly shrunk in almost every industry. One of the drivers is access to the</p><p>tools; another is access to the knowledge. What hasn’t changed is the</p><p>amount of passion and determination it takes to innovate. But success in a</p><p>new start-up is no longer confined to the exclusive purview of the industry</p><p>expert because access to knowledge, skill, and tools have been</p><p>democratized over the last couple of decades.</p><p>CLUSTERED SYSTEMS</p><p>Let me introduce you to Phil Hughes and Bob Lipp. Phil and Bob were one</p><p>of the early start-ups to rent space in our Menlo Park location. Electronic</p><p>experts by training, both were semi-retired and in their late fifties or early</p><p>sixties, well over the 29-year-old target age that VCs like to fund in the</p><p>Valley. Their idea was to use cooling liquid and a radiator system to cool</p><p>server racks. Most racks at the time were designed to use just air-</p><p>conditioning. The racks that were designed to use fluid were still very</p><p>primitive.</p><p>Today, most of the cloud is built on huge warehouses stuffed with</p><p>servers stacked on top of one another. The chips consume enormous</p><p>amounts of electricity, and a stunning amount of electricity is used to run</p><p>air-conditioning systems to keep those computers cool. In fact, computer</p><p>centers consume 2 percent of all the energy in the United States and cost</p><p>$250 billion in electricity a year globally (in 2010), a rate that is growing by</p><p>double digits every year. It’s a big business. IBM and Emerson Electronics</p><p>are a couple of the Fortune 500 firms that compete in this space, providing</p><p>cooling system solutions. A 10 percent improvement in cooling efficiency</p><p>would mean $25 billion is saved electricity in a field that continues to grow</p><p>by double digits each year.</p><p>Well, Phil and Bob were unable to raise money from venture capital</p><p>firms in Silicon Valley, not too surprising when a $100,000 bet on some 29-</p><p>year-old Stanford computer science student building applications for</p><p>Facebook, Google, or the web could exit in a few years for hundreds of</p><p>millions of dollars. Unless you were doing social, mobile, or gaming in the</p><p>Valley in 2010, it wasn’t easy to get VCs to invest in your project. Worse, if</p><p>you were fiftysomething, working on something physical, and competing</p><p>with IBM as a first-time entrepreneur, you were lucky to get a return phone</p><p>call at all.</p><p>Consequently, Phil and Bob—the wrong ages and pursuing the wrong</p><p>problem with major entrenched competitors—spent $20,000 of their own</p><p>money and two years of their lives working on building a better mousetrap.</p><p>After they had built a fully functional prototype and were able to</p><p>demonstrate it at a trade show, Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle) and</p><p>eBay expressed interest in supporting their efforts. Both Sun Microsystems</p><p>and eBay were end users and fully understood the limitations of the current</p><p>cooling systems. With further development and effort, Phil and Bob were</p><p>able to land a multimillion-dollar Department of Energy (DOE) grant and</p><p>build out and develop more systems. Eventually, because</p><p>for more authentic and quality things, along with a renewed interest in how</p><p>to make things, also contribute to the movement. I’ll cover each in its own</p><p>way, but with a multiplicity of trends pushing along the Maker Movement,</p><p>we have only begun to see an outline of its eventual power to remake the</p><p>United States and the world.</p><p>The founders of this movement launched Make Magazine, the bible of</p><p>the Maker Movement, in January 2005. Dale Dougherty, Sherry Huss, and</p><p>Dan Woods, along with the support and encouragement from Tim O’Reilly,</p><p>launched the magazine and then the Maker Faire, an annual gathering of</p><p>50,000 to 125,000 in three major cities around the country,</p><p>Modeled after the old Popular Mechanics format, with a heavy</p><p>emphasis on describing projects that could be made by the home enthusiast,</p><p>Make Magazine has become the touch-stone of the movement. The arrival</p><p>of each magazine is like getting a new Christmas catalog of things you want</p><p>. . . to make.</p><p>When the group launched the first Maker Faire in San Mateo,</p><p>California, in April 2006, 25,000 people showed up, many from out of state,</p><p>wanting to connect with other people like themselves. And just like that,</p><p>with an eclectic mix of people, projects, and things, the twenty-first-century</p><p>version of the state fair was born. Eight years later, with expansions to</p><p>hundreds of Mini Maker Faires in other cities and states around the country,</p><p>the San Mateo Maker Faire will likely top 125,000 visitors and participants</p><p>in 2013. With its annual draw of tens of thousands of acolytes joining</p><p>together to celebrate making things, Maker Faire is like Mecca to the Maker</p><p>Movement.</p><p>At the first Faire, future TechShop founder Jim Newton sat with a table,</p><p>a sign, and an idea. By October 2006, he, his partner, and a bunch of</p><p>volunteers had opened the first full-blown makerspace.</p><p>Since then, the movement has begun, and TechShop has been joined by</p><p>many other companies. We have partnered with Autodesk, the software</p><p>company that owns AutoCAD, Inventor, 3ds Max, and Maya. Autodesk has</p><p>jumped into the Maker Movement with both feet, releasing a slew of free</p><p>software, making it possible for anyone eight to eighty to design and make.</p><p>The company has also increased its pace of acquisitions with purchases like</p><p>Instructables.com, an online free instructional website where one can learn</p><p>and share how to make almost anything.</p><p>Ford Motor Company, DARPA, the Veterans Administration, General</p><p>Electric, Lowe’s Home Improvement, National Instruments, and a growing</p><p>number of other large and small companies have recently joined with us and</p><p>others in helping to drive the message, platforms, and impact of this</p><p>movement.</p><p>New companies have emerged as a result of the Maker Movement.</p><p>AdaFruit, Sparkfun, Inventibles, Quirky, and MakerBot Industries all come</p><p>to mind. One of the keys to this movement is the democratizing impact of</p><p>access to the tools one needs to make things.</p><p>I met Jim Newton, founder and now chairman of TechShop, at a</p><p>software party in Palo Alto, California, in 2007. I overheard him describe</p><p>the workshop as being “kind of like Kinko’s for geeks.” Since, at one point</p><p>in my career, I had run the geekiest part of Kinko’s (the computer services</p><p>area across the United States), I was intrigued. I thought to myself, “I am</p><p>Kinko’s for geeks. What is this guy talking about?” Eventually, Jim got me</p><p>to come and take a look at the first TechShop location in Menlo Park, and</p><p>he introduced me to the beginning of the movement.</p><p>At one point on that first visit, I went from table to table in the store</p><p>asking, “What are you making?” Three times in a row I talked to</p><p>entrepreneurs who told me that they had saved 95–98 percent of their</p><p>development costs by using TechShop to make their initial products and</p><p>sometimes their first couple of production runs.</p><p>I had done plenty of business development, product development, new</p><p>product, or service launches along with research and development in my</p><p>career. A 98 percent reduction in the cost of launching a product or</p><p>company means, for example, that what used to cost $100,000 now costs</p><p>just $2,000. This is stunning. It moves something from being hard or</p><p>impossible to easily doable by anyone in the middle class. This platform</p><p>democratizes hardware innovation in one fell swoop.</p><p>Jim showed me the class infrastructure and educational track that could</p><p>be taken by anyone and that would move each person from not knowing</p><p>how to make anything to helping him or her become a confident maker.</p><p>And then I met the TechShop members. This was the most amazing group</p><p>of artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, students, crafters, investors, and</p><p>engineers I had ever encountered in one location. Some of them were</p><p>already on a path to change the world. I was instantly hooked—and you</p><p>will be too. You will meet many of these people in the following pages.</p><p>These have been six of the most amazing years of my life. I’ve met the</p><p>most interesting, innovative, optimistic, energetic, and engaging men,</p><p>women, and kids one can imagine. Many of my heroes have become</p><p>friends, and many of my new friends have become heroes of the movement.</p><p>When I first started this journey, I believed that if this Maker</p><p>Movement could scale up, it could actually impact the world in a positive</p><p>manner. Six years later, I don’t just believe this anymore . . . I know it. I</p><p>have proof. Our members have changed the world in significant ways.</p><p>Important companies have launched out of our space and the movement at</p><p>large.</p><p>You will have to read the book to learn more, but what I know now is</p><p>that we are at just the beginning of the largest explosion of creativity and</p><p>innovation the world has ever seen. I know that these platforms</p><p>revolutionize innovation in a way the world has never before seen. I know</p><p>that the Maker way, thought, and movement will become a defining</p><p>characteristic of at least the first half of this century, if not most of it. I</p><p>know this because I see it play out every day in my role as the CEO of</p><p>TechShop. I get to see people pursue their dreams of changing the world . . .</p><p>and then watch them and others do it again and again and again. I get to</p><p>interact with our staff members, who tell me they have a hard time</p><p>believing all the amazing things our members are doing and making. They</p><p>tell me that being a part of this makerspace is the most interesting, fun, and</p><p>meaningful work they have ever had.</p><p>I get to host dignitaries, futurists, consultants, and exploratory</p><p>committees that come to the Silicon Valley to see the next big thing and try</p><p>to understand how they might be able to take some of the great ideas home.</p><p>Please forgive me for talking about TechShop throughout the book. I</p><p>use the generic “makerspace” wherever I can, where it makes sense, and</p><p>where it doesn’t detract from the facts. But we have the leading makerspace</p><p>in the market with six locations spread across the United States today. We</p><p>have become one of the leading brands in this emerging market. The point</p><p>of this book is not to shill for TechShop. Rather, it is to shine a light on</p><p>what will become one of the most important movements of a generation,</p><p>and then to invite you to participate in it.</p><p>I became a Green Beret years ago and adopted the motto, “De Oppresso</p><p>Liber.” This translates as “to liberate the oppressed.” Little did I know at the</p><p>time that the real opportunity for me to help “liberate the oppressed” would</p><p>come through helping TechShop achieve its goal of democratizing access to</p><p>the tools of the next industrial revolution. It has been an amazing ride so far</p><p>and promises to become even more amazing as the movement grows in the</p><p>United States and then around the world. This movement will not stop at</p><p>the U.S. borders. It is too fundamental. It will eventually wash over the</p><p>entire world.</p><p>I was thrilled recently when Chris Anderson, formerly of Wired</p><p>magazine (the preeminent chronicler of all things web-related), told an</p><p>audience filled with his peers that, “If you thought the web was big, I think</p><p>this is going to be bigger.”</p><p>data centers were</p><p>driving such demand for energy, the DOE held a “Global Chill-Off” where</p><p>it invited all the large firms supplying equipment into this industry to a</p><p>scientifically controlled and refereed competition—which Phil and Bob</p><p>won. They beat IBM and Emerson. The folks at Emerson were smart</p><p>enough to license the technology from Clustered Systems, Phil and Bob’s</p><p>company, and now sell it globally.</p><p>Note the most important piece of this development: the prototype.</p><p>In technology transfer circles, moving from concept to prototype is the</p><p>underfunded valley of death. Prototypes can cost hundreds of thousands or</p><p>millions of dollars. Or at least they used to. Not anymore. Teams can</p><p>prototype their products themselves and save 95 percent of their</p><p>development costs.</p><p>It was this realization that the game had changed for starting hardware</p><p>companies that first drew me to TechShop. I met Phil and Bob in Menlo</p><p>Park, and when they described what they were doing and how much they</p><p>had spent, I couldn’t believe my ears. Having worked at a couple of Fortune</p><p>500 manufacturing companies, I knew what it cost to develop prototypes.</p><p>The molds alone, if done on the cheap, cost $15,000. Just scheduling a few</p><p>focus groups took months of work and $20,000 to $50,000, and that was if</p><p>you were only going to conduct a couple of local, cheap events. A national</p><p>sampling could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And here were a</p><p>couple of people building an entire system for under $20,000. And they</p><p>weren’t the only ones.</p><p>DIFFICULTY IS NOT A BARRIER</p><p>I like Phil and Bob’s story because they, too, learned the skills they needed</p><p>as they went along—welding, milling, CNC tooling, sandblasting, and</p><p>powder coating. They designed, constructed, and built the entire cooling</p><p>system themselves or, in a few instances, hired other makers to help them.</p><p>Yet they were taking on players like IBM and Emerson Electronics in a</p><p>field where they had no experience, and they were working on a very</p><p>difficult problem. This is a mechanical, electronic, chemical, software, and</p><p>computer problem. They had to manage a patent field with “picket fences”</p><p>erected by engineering and legal departments from a few of the largest</p><p>industrial companies in the world. Yet with two years of focused effort,</p><p>learning, and failing fast, they succeeded. And this wasn’t just a one-off</p><p>improvement.</p><p>“The efficiency of the Clustered Systems’ cooling system supports the</p><p>greatest level of density and performance we’ve seen so far, and it has the</p><p>legs to support several more product generations,” according to Dr. Stephen</p><p>Wheat, senior director of Intel High Performance Computing.2</p><p>JET PACK</p><p>I met Andy Filo soon after I started at TechShop in 2007. Andy had sold or</p><p>licensed a number of toys to major toy companies over the years. He also</p><p>consulted on design for the manufacturing process of high-volume</p><p>manufacturing. Companies would hire him to help them scale up. But he</p><p>was not working on a toy when I met him. Nope. He was working on a jet</p><p>pack. Yep. A jet pack. Hello.</p><p>Early on, I asked him why.</p><p>His response? “Hey, GM, GE, and Boeing aren’t working on it, and I</p><p>was promised a jet pack. So if they won’t work on it, I will.”</p><p>And so Andy is working on a jet pack. Actually, he sells them. They</p><p>only get about 30 seconds of flight time and use the “traditional” method of</p><p>hydrogen peroxide to get enough thrust to get the pilot off the ground. But</p><p>Andy has designed, built, and sold a jet pack to an event production</p><p>company that uses it as a perennial crowd-pleaser.</p><p>Here is where it gets interesting. At TechShop, we conduct a lot of</p><p>tours and presentations to large companies, educational institutions, and</p><p>governmental agencies. We count each as a partner today and expect to</p><p>develop many partnerships in the future. We had a large contingent of folks</p><p>in from NASA at our San Jose location. After our PowerPoint presentation,</p><p>there were still a few doubters in the crowd. Frankly, they scoffed at my</p><p>slide of Andy’s pilot flying around in a jet pack. However, as luck would</p><p>have it, as we moved into the shop and the visitors started to wander around</p><p>on their own, one of the NASA folks looked into Andy’s workspace and</p><p>saw a NASA jet pack on a stand in his suite.</p><p>“What’s that?” he asked.</p><p>“A space pack from your agency.” I said.</p><p>“What’s it doing here?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Let’s ask Andy.”</p><p>Andy came in and explained to them that as part of his due diligence he</p><p>owned versions of all the jet packs ever made. He had just finished 3D</p><p>printing a new nozzle that only a 3D printer could make and that could</p><p>increase the thrust of the jets eight-fold. He then coyly asked, “You guys are</p><p>doing this now, right?”</p><p>Nope.</p><p>Andy is now a contractor to NASA.</p><p>ORU KAYAK</p><p>I came in another time to the San Francisco location, and the staff told me I</p><p>needed to meet Anton (Tony) Willis. He had taken over an entire table with</p><p>a mound of corrugated plastic. It looked like some kind of folding plastic</p><p>origami sci-fi film gone bad. I had no idea what he was working on.</p><p>“Hi, I’m Mark. What are you working on?”</p><p>“This,” said Tony, spreading out his arms to visually encompass the</p><p>plastic mess on the table, “is an origami kayak.”</p><p>Silence.</p><p>Stunned silence.</p><p>“A what?”</p><p>“Well,” Tony acknowledged, “I have some more work to do, but the</p><p>basic idea has been laid out. I think it is going to work.”</p><p>“An origami kayak?” I repeated. “Origami” and “kayak” are words I’d</p><p>never heard in the same sentence before. Then again, the number of times I</p><p>hear odd juxtapositions at TechShop—combinations of words, ideas,</p><p>concepts that I’ve never heard anywhere else—is staggering. Things like,</p><p>“This is a desktop diamond manufacturing device, a neutron shield for a</p><p>fusion reactor, an engine design for a jet pack, a satellite, Mr. Potato Head</p><p>for your head, a pterodactyl Flugtag flying device, “a fire tornado,” “a lunar</p><p>lander.” But I digress.</p><p>“An origami kayak?” I asked again.</p><p>“Yes. You see, I love to kayak, and when I moved into my new</p><p>apartment in downtown San Francisco, I no longer had room to store my</p><p>kayak. I had also just read a book about origami and thought to myself, why</p><p>not design a collapsible kayak?”</p><p>Hmm, I thought to myself. Now there’s an unfortunate turn of a phrase.</p><p>I don’t know anyone who would willingly buy a collapsible kayak. Aloud, I</p><p>said, “Interesting. How is it coming?”</p><p>“Oh, I have a long way to go yet, but I think it is going to work.”</p><p>I watched Tony’s progress over months of work with a combination of</p><p>fascination and mild horror. A collapsible kayak? Tony made over 25</p><p>prototypes, took them out to the treacherous San Francisco Bay, and began</p><p>to perfect the design. Eventually, he had test pilots with years of kayak</p><p>experience try them out with very positive results.</p><p>“What’s your next step?” I asked one day.</p><p>“I’m getting ready to launch a Kickstarter campaign to see if I can raise</p><p>$80,000 and do a full production run.”</p><p>“Seriously?!” I was surprised. “Eighty thousand dollars. That’s a big</p><p>campaign.”</p><p>“Yes, but that is what I need. I launch the site tomorrow—can I include</p><p>you in the e-mail blast about the launch?”</p><p>“Sure.” I responded.</p><p>So the next morning, around 6 a.m., I received an e-mail announcing</p><p>Tony’s collapsible kayak campaign. I logged in shortly after 10 a.m. and</p><p>saw he had already raised around $40,000. A very good start. Later that day,</p><p>I was on call with a journalist who was asking me why I thought providing</p><p>access to tools was so revolutionary. I asked her if she had heard of</p><p>Kickstarter; she had. What would her response be, I asked, if a designer</p><p>came to her investment group and asked it to invest in an origami kayak</p><p>company? She replied that the group would, of course, take a pass.</p><p>“Exactly,” I said. “Of course you would take a pass. Without a</p><p>prototype or traction you would have to be crazy to do otherwise. But if the</p><p>inventor could build a prototype and show it to a global audience of kayak</p><p>people, he might be able to get it funded.”</p><p>I went on to describe Tony’s project and how it had just launched</p><p>that</p><p>morning. I asked the journalist to hang on while I checked his launch page</p><p>to see how much money he had secured. The amount? Over $80,000. Tony</p><p>had secured more than he needed to launch his company in a single day.</p><p>The journalist wrote a nice article.</p><p>Tony finished the Kickstarter campaign with $443,806 in funding. No</p><p>angel group in the world would have provided that kind of funding under</p><p>any kind of terms. It is a business that is unlikely to go public, have a</p><p>billion-dollar exit, or secure a follow-on round. And now it is funded all</p><p>through presales of products. Tony owns the company. He didn’t have to</p><p>give any of it away. That’s $443,806 in sales.</p><p>DANNY</p><p>I met Danny Fukuba soon after I started at TechShop. He had just finished</p><p>building an electric, self-balancing, 18-m.p.h. barstool, part of his project to</p><p>build his own personal Segway since he couldn’t afford to buy one. As the</p><p>captain of a local robotics club, Danny had some basic skills. He then went</p><p>online, found a mentor, and built his own Segway. Not bad. Gyros,</p><p>aluminum welding, pc boards, circuits, and wiring, and he did it all himself.</p><p>Not too surprisingly, Danny was accepted by some top engineering</p><p>schools in the country. Surprisingly, he didn’t go. Instead, he began to teach</p><p>himself everything he wanted to know by taking free classes online and</p><p>build classes at our location in Menlo Park. While I do not recommend this</p><p>career path to my children, we do need to recognize that going to college</p><p>isn’t for everyone. Actually, only 50 percent of high school graduates go to</p><p>college, and a significant percentage of those who do go don’t finish. Bill</p><p>Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, and Steve Jobs all come to mind.</p><p>Eventually, Danny linked up with a friend, Sam Gordon, and they</p><p>designed and created a beautiful smartphone stand made from of brushed</p><p>aircraft aluminum. They, too, launched a Kickstarter campaign, looking for</p><p>$10,000, and they raised $131,220.</p><p>Danny and Sam then worked with another TechShop member, Bradley</p><p>Leong, on a stunningly gorgeous iPad keyboard design that basically turns</p><p>an iPad into a MacBook Air “lite.” They were looking for $90,000, a big</p><p>number for a Kick-starter campaign, but they were trying to make a</p><p>computer keyboard. That they could do it for $90,000, including their living</p><p>expenses, is amazing. They raised $797,979.</p><p>In the few years since Danny graduated from high school, he has</p><p>learned how to make just about anything and helped to design, develop, and</p><p>sell almost a million dollars in products. I daresay he has had an amazing</p><p>education. He also owns part of a company and is debt free. Maybe he will</p><p>hire some of his peers from MIT once they graduate.</p><p>WHAT IS YOUR STORY?</p><p>It is a little early in this book to ask this, but I need to plant the seed.</p><p>What are you going to make?</p><p>We were born to make. If you were to enter a kindergarten class in your</p><p>local school and ask the kids, “Who likes to make things?” every child</p><p>would raise his or her hand. Everyone has ideas, though most stop</p><p>fantasizing about them by the time they hit middle school. By then, they</p><p>have learned that there is a single right answer to every question. That their</p><p>art is either good and looks like the thing they are trying to draw, or not—</p><p>and, therefore, they are not artists.</p><p>But the rules for success in the twenty-first century are emerging, and</p><p>they are radically different from the rules in the nineteenth and twentieth</p><p>centuries. You can make art, you can create, and you can sell those</p><p>creations—or at least make them well enough that you or your loved ones</p><p>would be thrilled to own the things you have made, be they chairs, desks,</p><p>plates, cups, clothing, lamps, computer accessories, or whatever. If you are</p><p>willing to climb the knowledge ladder needed, maybe you, too, could</p><p>become the next Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Jim McKelvey, or even Jazz</p><p>Tigan.</p><p>Here is the thing: You must learn to learn. We must learn to learn. We</p><p>must develop our skills at creating, developing, and nurturing things and</p><p>services that others value.</p><p>The age of being a cog in a big machine and marching one’s way to a</p><p>defined benefit plan retirement is over. In its place is a global talent pool</p><p>with access to the same tools, knowledge, and equipment as everyone else</p><p>and with competition coming from every angle inside and outside of the</p><p>industry. Nokia and Motorola owned the cell phone industry top to bottom,</p><p>and then BlackBerry came in to mess it up. But BlackBerry was just a</p><p>harbinger of the change coming. Apple, at the time just a computer</p><p>company, assaulted the cell phone cartel and won. It won big. And then</p><p>Google—how crazy that is in retrospect—jumped in and changed it all up</p><p>again. Now Samsung is making a good run at both of them.</p><p>I say just wait. As the operators figure out they need to open their</p><p>systems up, all kinds of new competitors are likely to emerge from some</p><p>pro-am’s garage and take them on. I love the title of the former Intel CEO’s</p><p>book, Only the Paranoid Survive. I would add, just because you’re paranoid</p><p>doesn’t mean you will survive. Only those who learn will survive.</p><p>Just think about it. Elon takes on three industries and does well; Square</p><p>takes on merchant banking and payment processing; Clustered Systems</p><p>takes on IBM and Emerson and wins. These are very big wins. But Jazz is</p><p>just as happy; you don’t have to take on the world, change an industry, or</p><p>have an enormous exit to live a better version of your life. You do have to</p><p>try, learn, and improve. You do have to put yourself out there and risk</p><p>failure. But in this new world, you don’t have to go bankrupt if you fail</p><p>because you can fail small. You can innovate as a hobby. Imagine that: a</p><p>nation of innovation hobbyists working to make their lives more</p><p>meaningful and the world a better place. Welcome to the maker revolution.</p><p>8</p><p>Distributed and Flexible Manufacturing</p><p>3D PRINTING</p><p>3D printing has become an overnight sensation—after 25 years. A couple of</p><p>key patents expired and a bunch of small companies jumped in to create</p><p>super cheap versions of what professionals have had for years.</p><p>For the uninitiated, this is a device, much like a printer, that can</p><p>produce three-dimensional things out of plastic. The higher-end versions</p><p>can actually do rubber or mixtures of different kinds of plastic. The highest-</p><p>end versions use metal powder that is laser sintered (melted) into three-</p><p>dimensional things.</p><p>The most common of the 3D printers, however, is simply a printer that</p><p>extrudes a continuous stream of molten plastic that cools quickly to a hard</p><p>plastic. This allows a computer controlling it to “print,” or extrude, an</p><p>object. They are fun to watch, easy to use, and very addictive. The price</p><p>points are approaching consumer levels.</p><p>With the Internet at one’s fingertips, it’s possible to download ideas</p><p>from sites like Thingiverse.com and start printing out toys and “jewelry”</p><p>right away. Though it won’t be possible to print out an iPhone anytime</p><p>soon, it’s easy to create fun and useful objects at home.</p><p>Jim Newton, TechShop’s founder and chairman, went on a cross-</p><p>country trip with his family recently. So that there would be more room in</p><p>the family vehicle, Jim pulled out a center seat that was bolted to the floor.</p><p>When he removed the bolts, he discovered that they went all the way</p><p>through the floor. He now had the extra room he wanted but also got a lot of</p><p>road noise coming through the holes in the floor. He could have reinserted</p><p>the old bolts, but they would have stuck up too high and gotten in the way.</p><p>He didn’t want to cut the bolts down because after the trip he planned to put</p><p>the seat back. So Jim measured the bolts, figured out how long they needed</p><p>to be, determined what size of a bolt to use, and went on the McMaster-Carr</p><p>website for a free download of the perfect bolt design he needed. (A</p><p>number of websites provide files in a format that a 3D printer can print.) He</p><p>then pulled the file into his design software, shortened the bolt to the length</p><p>he wanted, adjusted the head to make it easier</p><p>to use with his hands, and</p><p>then printed the bolt out in ABS plastic on his home 3D printer. Just like</p><p>that, he eliminated the ground noise.</p><p>Greg Gage enthralls audiences around the world by seemingly “hacking</p><p>into a cockroach’s nervous system” live and on stage. He does it to</p><p>demonstrate how easy backyard science has become. His company,</p><p>Backyard Brains, sells kits so kids can do the experiment themselves. Greg</p><p>tells a compelling story about how, as a kid, he had learned it was possible</p><p>to hook up special equipment to “listen” to a neuron fire in a brain and</p><p>decided to pursue science so that one day he could do the experiment</p><p>himself.</p><p>Well, life didn’t turn out the way he was expecting. He studied hard in</p><p>high school and thought that once he got to college in his major, he would</p><p>get to play with this special equipment. Of course, that didn’t happen. Greg</p><p>had to study his major, take classes, and work in the labs he could get into,</p><p>and he never got to work on the very expensive, specialized equipment.</p><p>Only graduate students got to work in those labs. Greg went on to graduate</p><p>school and eventually got his PhD in biomedical engineering, without ever</p><p>having access to the tools to perform the “spike” test he had wanted to do</p><p>since childhood. Then times changed. With sensors inexpensive and</p><p>computers affordable, he built a small, simple, portable “spiker box”</p><p>himself. And now he sells these boxes on the Internet for $99 dollars.</p><p>Homegrown biomedical engineering experiments you can do at home. He’ll</p><p>even sell you a box of cockroaches.</p><p>Greg has gotten a lot of recognition for this nice little hack. He is now a</p><p>TED Senior Fellow, has been named to CNN’s The Next List, and has had</p><p>numerous articles written about what he is doing. How this fits into</p><p>TechShop: As part of the TED Fellows program, TechShop offers a free</p><p>annual membership to all current TED Fellows. Greg is doing postdoc work</p><p>at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, just 30 minutes away from the</p><p>Dearborn location. He took advantage of our location in Dearborn outside</p><p>of Detroit, and as a result, he has free access to sophisticated design</p><p>software, 3D printers, laser cutters, and other tools. Backyard Brains has</p><p>recently created a smartphone microscope that folds up neatly into a small</p><p>handheld device that one can use with the phone’s camera to do</p><p>experiments.</p><p>Here is what is cool. Not only did Greg use the laser cutters and 3D</p><p>printers to produce the prototypes, his company manufactures the devices</p><p>on demand and uses the 3D printers and laser cutters for production.</p><p>Manufacturing on demand. This is a pretty big deal.</p><p>We have been talking about using advanced manufacturing and</p><p>personalization production methods for a long time. There are some decent-</p><p>sized companies that do personalization through embellishment, such as</p><p>adding a customer’s name or an optional or custom design to the product. T-</p><p>shirts, advertising specialties, laser etching, and so on are done this way.</p><p>Very few companies actually manufacture an entire product on demand. But</p><p>that is what Greg is doing. Backyard Brains makes a product after it is</p><p>ordered, and the company uses advanced computer-controlled</p><p>manufacturing systems to keep the costs low. Called “advanced</p><p>manufacturing” in some circles, this approach is a revolution in</p><p>manufacturing, and it is being driven by the reduced costs of these systems,</p><p>tied with cheap computer systems and easy-to-learn-and-use software.</p><p>TYPES OF 3D PRINTERS</p><p>Three-dimensional printing was invented by Chuck Hall of 3D Systems in</p><p>1986 with the invention of a stereolithography (SLA) machine. This type of</p><p>additive manufacturing uses an infrared laser to cure a polymer resin. The</p><p>way it works is that there is a small containment vessel with a platform in</p><p>the middle that can be lowered into the pool of polymer. The laser is</p><p>computer controlled and fires at the pool, curing small sections of plastic</p><p>while leaving the rest liquid. The platform then drops a little, the part drops</p><p>just marginally below the surface of the liquid, and the laser fires again. In</p><p>this way, a part is created out of the liquid polymer into a hard plastic.</p><p>These machines were very expensive, and the software was expensive</p><p>and difficult to use. Only large companies, universities, and government</p><p>research labs used them.</p><p>Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is the most common process we see</p><p>now. Recently, the basic patents for the process expired, and an explosion of</p><p>3D printer companies have jumped in to design and produce them. An FDM</p><p>machine is basically a very sophisticated glue gun. It uses a thin strand of</p><p>plastic on a spool, feeds it into a heating head, and pushes, or extrudes, it</p><p>out the head at a carefully calibrated speed. The head or platform then</p><p>moves around, allowing one to build up a model one small globule of</p><p>plastic at a time.</p><p>Leaders in this field include 3D Systems, Objet, and newcomers like</p><p>MakerBot and Type A Machines. It’s now possible to purchase one of these</p><p>printers for around $1,200. With prices dropping every year, the machines</p><p>are rapidly becoming a consumer product. These new price points have also</p><p>made it practical to put a 3D printer on every designer desk, much like Ford</p><p>recently announced it is going to do. This is brilliant. Giving rapid, low-</p><p>cost, and easy prototype capability to designers can only help Ford</p><p>designers do their jobs better, faster, and cheaper.</p><p>A second type of additive printer is the laser sintering platform. It</p><p>operates the same way an SLA machine does in that there is a container of</p><p>material (this time something solid), a platform, and a laser. The difference</p><p>is that the material can be metal, ceramic, or a wide range of other types of</p><p>materials. Jewelers have begun to use this system to create custom jewelry</p><p>quickly on demand. Using computer processing, jewelers can also make</p><p>incredibly intricate, complicated, and in some instances formerly</p><p>impossible designs.</p><p>The ZPrinter uses an interesting hybrid approach. Like the SLA and</p><p>laser sintering, there is a container with a material in it and a platform that</p><p>drops as the material is hardened. Unlike the other two processes, however,</p><p>this material is a powderlike substance that hardens when sprayed with a</p><p>binder agent.</p><p>Using basic inkjet technology to control the head, the “inkjet” cartridge</p><p>creates a nice platform that can actually operate in color.</p><p>Which of these printers one chooses to use depends on what one wants</p><p>to accomplish. The ABS plastic you get from an FDM machine isn’t as</p><p>strong as an injection molded version, but it is strong enough for many</p><p>applications. Boeing is famously using FDM machines in its production</p><p>plants for the Dream Liner, producing various components on 3D printers.</p><p>General Electric bought a 3D printing company for an undisclosed amount</p><p>in early 2013 with the intent of increasing its use of 3D-printed parts in its</p><p>jet engines. Watch for more of this kind of production to start happening</p><p>globally.</p><p>These printers are kid magnets. Watching 3D printers in action is like</p><p>watching fire. They are mesmerizing. Watching something emerge from</p><p>nothing is magical. So magical, in fact, that a few years ago, as I was</p><p>showing off a ZPrinter to kids at a Maker Faire, I started telling a few of</p><p>them that the next year we would be printing puppies.</p><p>“Really?” they asked, their eyes getting real big, hoping I was telling</p><p>them the truth and almost believing it because they were standing in front of</p><p>a machine that was producing things right in front of their eyes.</p><p>I had to tell them no, we weren’t going to be able to make puppies</p><p>anytime soon, but that if they decided to become scientists maybe they</p><p>could invent just such a machine when they got older.</p><p>In the scientific realm, researchers are experimenting with this</p><p>technology, exploring how to use it to build kidneys, muscles, cartilage for</p><p>ears, and more. Simple biological structures with a limited amount of</p><p>cellular variety are well within reach.</p><p>HOME 3D PRINTER</p><p>I recently bought a 3D printer so</p><p>I could better understand the current issues</p><p>and opportunities surrounding them. It is an FDM printer fed by a cartridge</p><p>filled with plastic filament that feeds into the print head. There is still work</p><p>to do on software interoperability, and the quality constraints on the low end</p><p>are still an issue. Still, it’s already been a small hit in my household. After</p><p>only about an hour, I had it set up, calibrated, and running its first “job.”</p><p>The device came with 15 basic designs, so I chose a linked bracelet. I ran</p><p>the design through the modeling software that came with the machine to</p><p>make sure that it would print, resized it just a little to make it larger, and</p><p>then let it print.</p><p>The printer came with an obnoxious yellow-green color of plastic</p><p>filament (I think it was my choice), but since our local high school sports</p><p>green, it was a good choice. After some laughs about giving plastic jewelry</p><p>to one’s wife, mine accepted the first fruits of the printer and tried the</p><p>yellow-green, plastic bracelet on. She immediately fell in love with its</p><p>kookiness.</p><p>The next day, she decided to wear the bracelet to the school where she</p><p>teaches, and it became the hit of the day.</p><p>“You mean you printed that out on a printer at home?”</p><p>“Does the printer cost $10,000?”</p><p>“How does it work?”</p><p>My wife is now a bona fide geek. When she explained to them the idea</p><p>of printing things at home and how it only took 45 minutes, the kids were</p><p>enthralled and the teachers impressed.</p><p>Following that success, I went online to Thingiverse .com, searched on</p><p>“bow tie,” and found some silly-looking 3D-printed ties. A file was</p><p>available in the right format for free, so I downloaded it, ran it through the</p><p>software, and printed out a yellow-green plastic bow tie. I’ll never put it on,</p><p>but I think my high school son is crazy enough to wear it on some spirit</p><p>days.</p><p>Many inventions that we can’t live without started out as hobbies and</p><p>oddities. Cars, gramophones, telephones, and even bicycles were initially</p><p>hobbies. Three-dimensional printing is too practical a tool to remain a</p><p>hobby. Wait and see; many households will have them in the next 10 years.</p><p>MANUFACTURING IN A 3D WORLD</p><p>I am often asked why I would start a chain of makerspaces when it is clear</p><p>we will someday be able to 3D print everything. This sentiment reminds me</p><p>of discussions on the paperless office I had back in the early 1990s. The</p><p>paperless office eventually led to having a printer on almost every desk and</p><p>certainly in every computer-accessorized home in the world. It didn’t</p><p>reduce the number of printed things in the world even 20 years later. I’m</p><p>pretty plugged in, yet I still get magazines, newspapers, annual reports,</p><p>legal documents, and plenty else in printed form. I’m still dealing with as</p><p>much or more paper as I ever have. So much new communication has</p><p>occurred even as the percentage of things converted to paper has dropped,</p><p>Though the nature of 3D printing is disruptive and some things will</p><p>certainly move to be printed at home or at work, I believe that the amount</p><p>of “things” made by traditional means will continue to expand for a long,</p><p>long time before 3D print technology will be able to replace them.</p><p>What do I mean?</p><p>Almost nothing I am wearing or sitting on will be seriously impacted</p><p>by 3D printing in the next decade. Cotton is wonderfully made, and leather</p><p>is very comfortable, durable, and useful. My watch is complex and</p><p>beautiful (it was designed in 3D and prototyped with a 3D printer but</p><p>manufactured traditionally). We have incredibly efficient, cheap, and high-</p><p>quality goods produced by integrated supply chains and multinational</p><p>competitors driving down the cost and improving the look and feel of</p><p>everyday things. It is going to take a while for 3D printers to cost-</p><p>effectively replace even day-to-day plastic items, much less than replace</p><p>organic items like a silk dress.</p><p>There are likely to be some outliers. Recently, I saw a 3D-printed</p><p>“fabric.” It is basically plastic chain mail. Its “drape” is amazing; its “hand”</p><p>is poor. I purposely just used two industry terms. The professional designer</p><p>has the world at her fingertips and leverages every advantageous attribute to</p><p>her advantage. Three-dimensional plastic and metal will have their</p><p>attributes as well. Sometimes they will enhance, sometimes not; sometimes</p><p>they will detract. Three-dimensional fabric will find its use—it may even be</p><p>avant-garde for a while—but it isn’t likely to replace cotton or silk any</p><p>more than synthetics have replaced them.</p><p>When I was at Avery Dennison, we tested hundreds of different papers</p><p>before settling on the one we launched for our ink-jet business cards. It</p><p>needed the right hand, stiffness, brightness, edge bleed, and so on. We</p><p>tracked 64 characteristics. If monochromatic ABS plastic were so</p><p>wonderful, we would already be using it for everything. The fact that one</p><p>doesn’t make a living room sofa out of it today probably means we will not</p><p>make a living room sofa out of it tomorrow, even if we could find a printer</p><p>big enough, could wait the amount of time the sofa would take to “print,”</p><p>and were willing to spend the amount of money we would need to should</p><p>we want it anyway.</p><p>3D printing is also trapped by geometric reality in that every time you</p><p>double the size, you quadruple the price.</p><p>The most advanced printers today can do two or three types of extruded</p><p>materials in multiple (read, not very many) colors. We are still</p><p>experimenting with the idea of embedding wires, circuits, and other things</p><p>into a 3D print process. Given current technological trends, most</p><p>manufacturers don’t have anything to worry about for a couple of decades.</p><p>What they should do, though, is look for ways to take advantage of these</p><p>printers to increase their capabilities, extend their supply chains, and</p><p>improve their customer service.</p><p>This concern about obsolescence is driven by hype and a lack of</p><p>understanding of how difficult the challenges are that face the new</p><p>technology. I’ve been guilty myself. A close friend of mine bought a lead</p><p>battery distribution company back in the early 1990s. I told him to be</p><p>careful because electric cars were the future and that the vehicles would</p><p>probably use lithium ion, not lead acid batteries. He was kind enough not to</p><p>laugh at me. Electric cars are still the future, and their batteries will</p><p>probably be made of lithium ion—and he will likely distribute those, too.</p><p>Last, making things is much, much harder than printing things. There</p><p>are so many more variables involved. It is going to take something more</p><p>disruptive than 3D printing in plastic to destroy manufacturing as we know</p><p>it. More likely, 3D printing will just become more complex, more robust,</p><p>and more roboticized. (More on that in a minute.)</p><p>No, 3D printing is not really about replacing things you can get already;</p><p>it is really about things you want that aren’t being made. Even Walmart</p><p>can’t carry everything. At the personal level, the reason you get a 3D printer</p><p>will be about self-expression and making things that aren’t made anywhere</p><p>else.</p><p>3D-PRINTED GUNS—OH MY!</p><p>Only an idiot would 3D-print a gun. And only a poorly informed journalist</p><p>with a bullhorn would think it was news. But it happened—well, sort of.</p><p>I’m not a weapons expert, but I am a former Green Beret. The business</p><p>ends of guns, the parts that matter most, are the barrel and upper receiver.</p><p>These are made of steel. The barrel is made of steel milled out of a solid</p><p>block. That way it will not blow up in your face and kill you. A hunting or</p><p>military barrel is made with high alloy chrome molybdenum steel. The best</p><p>barrels are made out of stainless steel. The pressure in a barrel when fired</p><p>can exceed 50,000 psi; steel that can handle 100,000 psi is required to</p><p>safely handle that pressure.</p><p>There may only be a handful of 3D printers in the world that can take</p><p>powdered steel and make it that strong. The only reason one would use</p><p>these tools would be to get at new geometries that can’t be made any other</p><p>way, or perhaps to improve the crystalline structure</p><p>beyond what can be</p><p>achieved in traditional smelting operations. These high-end metal laser-</p><p>sintering 3D printers and manufacturing processes are so hard to do well</p><p>that General Electric just decided to buy a company that specializes in the</p><p>technology, Morris Technologies in Cincinnati. If printing a 3D weapon</p><p>were so easy, why would GE need to buy a company to help with its aircraft</p><p>engines?</p><p>Making a lower receiver (we need to watch our definitions here</p><p>carefully: the lower receiver holds the bolt group, trigger, and magazine</p><p>port) using a 3D printer can work, since technically it is really just the</p><p>housing; however, even then it will not last very long. It requires machines</p><p>that cost a lot of money, not your garden-variety home 3D printer, and it’s</p><p>still stupid. Making the trigger and bolt out of plastic would just be dumb.</p><p>Even the famous Glock plastic pistol uses highly engineered plastic but uses</p><p>steel for key components throughout the gun. You could 3D print a gun</p><p>around a good barrel, bolt, and trigger group, and the like. But that is a far</p><p>cry from 3D-printing a gun. Every gun I’ve ever seen came with a lower</p><p>receiver. Why would someone print one? Guns are readily available in any</p><p>black market in the world and most Walmarts. Printing a lower receiver and</p><p>calling it 3D printing a gun is a cute PR device used to get some poor</p><p>journalists who know nothing about guns self-righteously shaking their</p><p>heads. I watched a couple of these sad folks shaking their heads, talking</p><p>about something they had no experience with, never reaching out to anyone</p><p>who knew anything about the topic. Just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t</p><p>make it true, right? I did field a couple of calls from responsible journalists</p><p>who then decided to ignore the story. Personally, I’m much more concerned</p><p>about the security of the nuclear medical waste stream at your local</p><p>hospital, but I’m off topic again.</p><p>Calling the lower receiver a gun is like 3D printing the doors of a</p><p>vehicle and calling it a car. And that, too, would beg the question, why? The</p><p>door would be of lower quality, very expensive, and slow to make. A 3D-</p><p>printed receiver is of lower quality than a real one, more expensive, slower</p><p>to make, and dangerous.</p><p>DARPA</p><p>The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) famously</p><p>developed the Internet. The agency spends billions of dollars on researching</p><p>extraordinary ideas. If it isn’t radical, crazy, or almost beyond the</p><p>imagination, then DARPA is not interested. One of my recent favorites is a</p><p>vaccine that reduces the amount of pain a soldier might feel with a</p><p>catastrophic wound.</p><p>Another of my favorite DARPA projects is the Adaptive Vehicle Make</p><p>program. This is an experiment in creating a new way to develop vehicle</p><p>platforms for the military by crowdsourcing the design and then using a</p><p>distributed manufacturing facility to build them. It actually worked.</p><p>DARPA’s first challenge was to help to create a military support vehicle, the</p><p>XC2V. The design was crowdsourced and then built at an open platform</p><p>vehicle production shop in Arizona called Local Motors. The winner of the</p><p>design competition was awarded $7,500. Then Local Motors was paid to</p><p>build the vehicle in its manufacturing facility. Fourteen weeks later it was</p><p>done.</p><p>The program has been expanded into a multimillion-dollar effort to</p><p>build a full combat vehicle. It is part of an advanced manufacturing effort</p><p>where everything is fully digitized and then manufactured in a distributed</p><p>manner. The basic idea is similar to why the Internet was built by DARPA:</p><p>to be able to route communications through a network of connected</p><p>computers with multiple redundant nodes spread out all over the United</p><p>States and world. That way, if some nodes were destroyed, the</p><p>communications system would be flexible enough to simply reroute</p><p>communications around them.</p><p>Similarly, in a distributed manufacturing system, the destruction of a</p><p>single plant wouldn’t take down the entire manufacturing capability of a</p><p>vehicle. It would be possible to “route around” the plant that had been</p><p>destroyed and simply have another facility produce what was needed. In its</p><p>eventual extreme implementation, industrial robots could be configured in a</p><p>flexible manufacturing environment that would allow for rapid</p><p>reconfiguration and autonomous manufacturing. We have a long way to go</p><p>before that becomes a reality, and some of the challenges may be</p><p>insurmountable with our current technology, but we will see some strong</p><p>progress toward this idea over the next couple of decades.</p><p>The idea of flexible manufacturing is already being successfully</p><p>deployed. Ford, unlike General Motors, decided that it couldn’t forecast</p><p>how many EcoBoost engines, hybrids, standard engines, or even diesel</p><p>engines it would need, so it designed the car manufacturing line to be able</p><p>to produce whatever was needed on demand. Ford just produces what is</p><p>needed based on current demand. GM, on the other hand, built an entire</p><p>production line devoted to the Volt electric vehicle. When demand did not</p><p>develop, GM had to shut the plant down for a while to let inventory move</p><p>through the sales channel. If the automaker could have developed a drive</p><p>train with flexibility on an existing platform as Ford had done, it would not</p><p>have found itself in the situation where it occasionally had to halt</p><p>production.</p><p>KINKO’S FOR MANUFACTURING</p><p>It is not hard to imagine a future where flexible manufacturing capabilities</p><p>are available like a FedEx Kinko’s in every city in the United States and the</p><p>world, stuffed with 3D printers, mills, lathes, robots, laser cutters, and</p><p>people facile in making things, supervising robots as the robots make</p><p>everything to order. You use the Internet to find that basic model of</p><p>something you want, then find local sources for the materials, and change</p><p>the design to meet your needs. Or mash it up with other basic models to</p><p>make it uniquely yours and then “print” it to the local flexible</p><p>manufacturing store.</p><p>There are plenty of serious obstacles in the way of making something</p><p>like a smartphone at a facility like this, but simple products can already be</p><p>made online at places like Shapeways .com.</p><p>At the time of this writing, there is a budding effort within the U.S.</p><p>government to create a new advanced manufacturing research and</p><p>development effort at up to 15 universities across the country. The idea is to</p><p>seed the effort with $1 billion and convince universities and sponsoring</p><p>private companies to bring another $1 billion to the effort. Focused areas in</p><p>3D printing, pharma, nano, and energy are envisioned.</p><p>An important part of the advanced manufacturing effort will be in the</p><p>area of flexible automation systems. Though the focused domains may be</p><p>from different disciplines and research areas, the basic tools that support the</p><p>research will almost certainly be the same in most instances. As I’ve</p><p>mentioned before, these include CNC tools, 3D printers, laser cutters, a</p><p>plastics lab, an electronics lab, and even textiles.</p><p>It would be an absolute travesty if we spent that $2 billion and kept the</p><p>communities out by making what is produced the exclusive purview of the</p><p>university researchers and the research departments of sponsoring</p><p>companies. The community doesn’t need or want access to the full facility,</p><p>but it would be easy to cordon off a public access lab from the specialized</p><p>tools needed for the lab’s other research.</p><p>ACCESS</p><p>It bears repeating that the real power of this envisioned open access facility</p><p>is that it taps more deeply into the communities’ capabilities and is</p><p>nonexclusionary. The best innovations are driven by an individual’s or</p><p>team’s personal passion and interest. Because labs and research facilities</p><p>have always been closed off, I dare say most of the greatest innovations</p><p>have not yet been developed. The raw capability of humanity has been</p><p>constrained by an incredible lack of access.</p><p>Even within large companies, most of the creative individuals don’t get</p><p>to work on the new things. Think about it. If the typical spend</p><p>at a large</p><p>industrial company is 3 to 5 percent on research, then by definition most</p><p>people are not working on innovation. That’s fine; someone has to make the</p><p>stuff that delivers the excess profits to fund research. But what this means is</p><p>that most of the engineers in a large firm are working on today’s products</p><p>and are restricted to spending their energies on those products and those</p><p>products only. Most engineers aren’t in R&D and don’t have access to those</p><p>labs. And they likely work on activities around day-to-day production, and</p><p>no general manager is ever going to let the engineers mess with innovation</p><p>on a functioning production line (a quick way to get fired is to miss</p><p>delivering on this quarter’s sales quota because you are trying to innovate</p><p>for something next year). Therefore, most (by far) of our highest trained</p><p>engineering talent is not allowed to use that talent to innovate. And even if</p><p>they do have 10 percent time or 20 percent time, they don’t have access.</p><p>The largest industrial companies in the world do not allow most of their</p><p>creative, experienced, and innovative engineers anywhere near a lab to</p><p>innovate. They have them squirreled away on production and other</p><p>activities. Many of these talented individuals end up in HR, finance,</p><p>marketing, and sales. This is insane. Not that these creative people are in</p><p>sales, but that they are in sales and their 10 percent time doesn’t give them</p><p>access to a lab. No. The world has changed, and it doesn’t need to be this</p><p>way anymore.</p><p>SELF-ASSEMBLY PROGRAMMABLE MATTER</p><p>The one real futuristic thing that would disrupt all this is molecular</p><p>manufacturing programmable matter. Like the way the CNC machine was</p><p>originally developed, the programable matter is being pursued by amazing</p><p>scientists at MIT. I suspect they will get a bunch of DARPA funding. It</p><p>would truly be revolutionary to be able to “program” materials to produce</p><p>organic and nonorganic things. It sounds like science fiction, but then, so</p><p>did going to the moon, or working underwater in submarines, or satellites,</p><p>not that long ago.</p><p>I like the case for it. Think about it. Why not have a fast-growing maple</p><p>tree that grows square, with no knots, and straight up with no limbs to get in</p><p>the way? And if we could do that, why not have the tree curve so that a</p><p>builder could plant two rows of them and have them grow into the framing</p><p>for a house? Kill them in place, put in a subfloor and roof, and you have a</p><p>home that was grown. OK, the square part’s harder. But could scientists</p><p>crack that genetic code? Maybe.</p><p>A step beyond that would be to harness the molecular manufacturing</p><p>capability of bacteria and create things that can assemble themselves in a</p><p>preprogrammed way. The research has started; however, practically</p><p>speaking, consumer-grade usefulness is likely to still be at least 20 years</p><p>away. And then, like many breakthroughs, it is likely that the products will</p><p>have their own unique uses rather than simply replace that which came</p><p>before. Because programmable matter would be by definition</p><p>reprogrammable, it might be cheaper in the long run than manufactured</p><p>goods. Though it might consume a lot of energy remaking itself, it still</p><p>might actually be cheaper to use reprogrammable matter than organic</p><p>matter.</p><p>I suspect that there might be intermediate steps like the one recently</p><p>taken by Ginger Krieg Dosier, an assistant professor of architecture (repeat,</p><p>architecture, not biological engineering) to reengineer bacteria to consume</p><p>urea (yes, the stuff in pee), calcium chloride, and sand to make bricks.1</p><p>NASA is looking into this to see if Martian soil could be turned into</p><p>bricks using water from the polar icecaps, astronaut pee, and bacteria. Yes,</p><p>housing made of pee, dirt, and bacteria. Sign me up!</p><p>A GREAT TIME TO BE ALIVE</p><p>Is this a great time to be alive, or what? I firmly believe we are entering the</p><p>greatest age of innovation and creativity in all of human history. They say</p><p>we stand on the shoulders of giants. Yes, but we are standing on a hoard of</p><p>giants now, and the tools, knowledge, markets, and financing have never</p><p>been this easy to access. In economic-speak this is called “liquidity.”</p><p>Another way to look at it is “velocity.”</p><p>A liquid market is one in which the ease of entering or exiting is low,</p><p>simple, and fast. It is used to describe investment in publically held</p><p>companies like Apple, Google, Ford, and GE—large companies with lots of</p><p>people buying and selling the stock. Changes in the underlying value are</p><p>quickly understood and reflected in the price. In a liquid market for</p><p>innovation, the value of an idea would be quickly determined. One of the</p><p>reasons that the Silicon Valley is the envy of the start-up world is that it has</p><p>a stunningly efficient and liquid market of capital for start-ups—at least for</p><p>start-ups focused on the last big thing.</p><p>Velocity is similar. It measures how fast money moves around in an</p><p>economy. It is something of an odd concept but is very important for an</p><p>economy. The idea goes something like this: On the first of the month, your</p><p>employer pays you a dollar, which you then spend at a grocery store, which</p><p>it uses to pay to its employees, who then spend it, and the cycle starts again.</p><p>So, at the beginning of the month, you say you got $1, the grocery store</p><p>says it got $1, and the employee got $1, so that $1 is actually $3. That is the</p><p>basic idea behind velocity.</p><p>I believe skills development, knowledge distribution, and capture have</p><p>a velocity component to them. When things that were formerly</p><p>sophisticated and difficult to do become easier, it is like increasing the</p><p>velocity of skill and knowledge. This has huge implications for the</p><p>economy.</p><p>Now that the cost for a start-up, the access to knowledge, and the speed</p><p>with which skills can be developed have all changed, I believe that the</p><p>Silicon Valley is going to start losing its influence in the start-up landscape.</p><p>It will not go away, but democratization, the low cost to try, and the</p><p>liquidity of markets along with crowdfunding of the smallest start-ups is</p><p>going to fundamentally change the game in the Silicon Valley.</p><p>This means it will be easier to start something great in the city where</p><p>you are right now. Access to cheap, easy-to-use, and powerful tools along</p><p>with access to market, funding, skills, and knowledge are completely</p><p>revolutionizing the way things are created, developed, made, financed, sold,</p><p>and even consumed. It is indeed a good time to be alive.</p><p>9</p><p>Accelerating Innovation</p><p>CORPORATIONS</p><p>I walked into my office in mid-2010 and found a note on my desk. “Bill</p><p>from Ford called. He wants a TechShop. Call ASAP.” My heart skipped a</p><p>beat. “Bill from Ford.”</p><p>Well, it wasn’t Bill Ford, chairman and former CEO of Ford Motor</p><p>Company (more on Bill Ford in a minute). It was Bill Coughlin, president</p><p>of Ford Global Technology. Among Bill Coughlin’s responsibilities as head</p><p>of licensing at Ford is that of increasing the quality and number of patents</p><p>Ford develops. He also happens to be a big believer in open innovation</p><p>principles as a way of extending and expanding innovation coming into</p><p>automobile companies. This may be considered radical by many in the</p><p>industry, but Ford is doing some interesting things, like fully funding the</p><p>development of a TechShop near its facilities in Dearborn, Michigan.</p><p>It took both organizations some time, but by the end of 2011, we had</p><p>jointly opened a 40,000-square-foot open innovation center. And here is</p><p>what happened next: Bill saw a 50 percent increase in the quantity of</p><p>quality patent ideas flowing into his team.</p><p>What triggered this sudden increase in creativity? Bill bundled a</p><p>TechShop membership into an award pool that Ford gives to employees</p><p>who submit quality patent ideas. It is a noncash incentive, but it turned out</p><p>to be a pretty big incentive.</p><p>The TechShop Detroit location has quickly become a feature of</p><p>multiple press events hosted by Ford’s PR and marketing. Literally</p><p>hundreds of press people from around the globe come, hang out, make</p><p>things, and see how Ford</p><p>is pushing innovation out beyond the walls of its</p><p>R&D organization.</p><p>It is one thing to keep sending “We Support Innovation” updates</p><p>through the company newsletter, blog, and website. It is completely</p><p>different to invest in and launch a physical embodiment of that commitment</p><p>and to provide significant employee discounts for those who want to join it,</p><p>or free memberships for those with quality patent ideas.</p><p>TechShop only takes up about half the Detroit–Allen Park facility, so</p><p>Ford is moving groups from around Ford into offices and labs in other parts</p><p>of the building. The first group to move in was the OpenXC platform team,</p><p>another example of Ford embracing Open principles. Funded by Ford, this</p><p>team is opening up automobile sensor data. Not just Ford’s, but anyone’.</p><p>The OpenXC team now has an open, extensible interface device that will</p><p>allow anyone to grab data from Ford sensors and do new, innovative things</p><p>with the data. Better, because it is an open platform, members in the</p><p>OpenXC community are designing the OpenXC device to work with other</p><p>car platforms. Ford is the first automobile company to open up this</p><p>communications conduit, and this is emblematic of how forward its</p><p>thinking is.</p><p>Ford started the OpenXC experiment a couple of years ago by letting</p><p>some universities play with the sensor data being transmitted through a car.</p><p>One of the teams created a Tweeting Ford Focus. Anytime the windshield</p><p>wipers were turned on, a device tweeted the car’s location and the fact that</p><p>it was raining. It did a bunch of other cute things as well.</p><p>I want to play with OpenXC so I can track not just that my son may or</p><p>may not be speeding, but also, by combining it with the accelerometer in his</p><p>phone, be able to tell how fast he is accelerating and how many Gs he is</p><p>pulling on a corner. Using this kind of tool, I’d know when he was doing</p><p>doughnuts in the high school parking lot. Ford launched the OpenXC</p><p>platform in January of 2013; anyone can now play with the sensor data</p><p>coming out of any recently produced Ford.</p><p>Jim Newton and I did get to meet Bill Ford at the Computer History</p><p>Museum in the Silicon Valley in 2012, where he told the audience, while</p><p>answering the last question of the evening, that if Henry Ford were to start</p><p>Ford Motor Company today, “He probably would have started in TechShop</p><p>. . .”</p><p>UNIVERSITY CONNECTION</p><p>So, where are the universities in the scheme of this innovation revolution?</p><p>Great question. A legal requirement for receiving some types of grants from</p><p>the U.S. government is that the applying university or research institution</p><p>must have a tech transfer office and effort. Ostensibly designed to provide</p><p>patent and other commercialization support to researchers or to manage</p><p>intellectual property (patents, inventions, software, or other copyrightable</p><p>works) developed at the institution, a majority of technology transfer offices</p><p>are famously inefficient. As an afterthought to the grant machines</p><p>developed and designed to fund university research and professorial</p><p>development, they do not drive any research objectives, have little power</p><p>within a university, and are left to sell “technology” that was designed to</p><p>help graduate students and professors get published and further their</p><p>careers.</p><p>There is no market mechanism at play to help guide research policy. I</p><p>don’t know that there needs to be, I’m just pointing out the reality. As a</p><p>result of this system, billions of research dollars are spent each year</p><p>building great university engineering departments with little to show for it</p><p>from an innovation perspective. The incentives are just not aligned. They</p><p>still educate and then graduate students. It is their primary mission. Some</p><p>universities also do some seriously hard research that isn’t likely to be done</p><p>in any other environment. This is not meant to be pejorative of the system,</p><p>just a realistic view of the innovation results versus research and</p><p>educational results.</p><p>Just as unfortunately, the university system is architected around</p><p>domain fiefdoms. Consequently, schools of architecture, engineering, fine</p><p>arts, and so on, rarely work closely together in a cross-disciplinary way.</p><p>Designed to grant degrees to students who have demonstrated proficiency</p><p>in their particular domains, each school is left to itself to scramble for</p><p>grants, endowments, income, students, buildings, and infrastructure with</p><p>help from the universities’ administration.</p><p>Here is one of the results. Each major university department runs its</p><p>own lab, often a small one, usually in the basement with limited access,</p><p>limited hours, and supervised by graduate students part time. Many grants</p><p>come with the need for machines, but often those machines are tied to that</p><p>grant, not even the department. Operating the machinery in a safe, secure</p><p>way is often an afterthought.</p><p>I recently visited a major university, which will remain anonymous,</p><p>where I was told that, technically, if you were not in the department, the</p><p>class, and doing domain-relevant research, you couldn’t use any of the new</p><p>machines attached to the grant. Makes sense, I guess. No point in creating</p><p>liability, scheduling, or training problems unattached to the direct</p><p>requirements of the grant. Furthermore, every department within this</p><p>university was doing the same thing. Tens of millions of dollars’ worth of</p><p>equipment had been purchased within the last few years under this system. I</p><p>learned this at a lunch that was pulled together by lab managers who had</p><p>independently invited me to come and give a presentation. What was really</p><p>funny about the meeting was that these four lab managers had never met</p><p>before, had never been in one another’s labs, and in a couple of instances,</p><p>didn’t even know the other school(s) had a lab. We had a great afternoon</p><p>together taking tours of the labs, each of which had wildly different access,</p><p>safety, hours, and operating assumptions.</p><p>ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY</p><p>Dr. Mitzi Montoya was on a panel with TechShop’s founder, Jim Newton,</p><p>when Jim described what a well-equipped makerspace entailed. As they say,</p><p>“Timing is everything.” Mitzi was in the process of building an innovation</p><p>center in Chandler, Arizona, and wanted half of the 40,000 square feet</p><p>dedicated to the machines her engineering students would need. As the vice</p><p>provost and dean of the College of Technology and Innovation, Mitzi and</p><p>her team were in the midst of figuring out what it needed to look like.</p><p>I’ll paraphrase her response, but it went something like this:</p><p>“So, instead of a 20,000-square-foot space full of machines that are</p><p>only available to our students, for a limited number of hours, supervised by</p><p>other students, taught by other students, in an unaccountable, uncontrollable</p><p>system . . . you could deliver an open access facility, professionally run,</p><p>with safety protocols, insurance, and qualified instructors, that was open</p><p>from 9 a.m. to midnight, and our students would interact with professionals</p><p>from the community that probably work at Intel and General Dynamics.</p><p>And we can layer in our innovation programs and attract other departments</p><p>and schools with the ASU umbrella? We need to talk.”</p><p>ASU will have the first university-sponsored open access DIY</p><p>fabrication studio on the planet.</p><p>TOWARD A BETTER MODEL</p><p>Fabrication shops will become like libraries, medical clinics, and</p><p>gymnasiums at universities. They will be central resources to be used by the</p><p>entire school and, like the medical clinics, the entire community. Regional</p><p>high-tech manufacturing centers will be colocated within the university</p><p>structure but off-site, leveraging the billions of dollars in research grants,</p><p>tied in with the technology transfer office and local incubator infrastructure.</p><p>This will help drive innovation in a cross-disciplinary, open access,</p><p>leveraged way. No longer will the architecture department have “all the</p><p>laser cutters,” the art department “all the woodworking machines,” and the</p><p>mechanical engineering school “all the metal machines.” No longer will</p><p>high school kids have to wait until college to</p><p>have access to equipment, and</p><p>no longer will local artists, engineers, or entrepreneurs have to mortgage</p><p>their homes to get the machines they need in order to produce while the</p><p>very machines they need sit idle most of the time at their local university.</p><p>For a small fee, they will have them right in their own communities.</p><p>We have already started to explore this model with Arizona State</p><p>University and the Technical University of Munich in Germany. The</p><p>general idea is to provide access to students who need a prototyping lab for</p><p>their studies, get companies in the local community to help support it, and</p><p>supplement overhead support requirements by opening up the platform to</p><p>anyone in the community who is willing to pay.</p><p>STANFORD D. SCHOOL</p><p>There are a couple of schools that are closer to what I’m proposing—MIT’s</p><p>Center for Bits to Atoms and Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design</p><p>or d.school. We have a location close to Stanford University and have had a</p><p>number of projects come out of the d.school. Interestingly enough, the</p><p>d.school isn’t actually a school within Stanford; it is a series of integrative</p><p>classes that can be taken by anyone in a graduate program at Stanford.</p><p>D.school is integrative in that it takes the expertise created in other degree</p><p>granting programs, combines the students, and creates challenging real-</p><p>world projects. It also has a lab space with many of the same tools that a</p><p>great makerspace would have.</p><p>EMBRACE</p><p>I covered the Embrace baby warmer in an earlier chapter, but I want to</p><p>make sure the handoff between d.school and Tech-Shop is clear. At the end</p><p>of the semester, Jane Chen’s d.school team had successfully developed and</p><p>demonstrated an infant warming blanket that could be used as poor</p><p>communities’ version of an incubator or as a transportation device that</p><p>would ensure a child a life-saving few more hours of regulated temperature</p><p>in the blanket while being transported to an incubator. Then the design class</p><p>ended. The baby warmer that was to become Embrace was not funded by a</p><p>research grant; it was a class project. There are no labs at Stanford designed</p><p>to support commercialization of projects that have been completed. Where</p><p>was it supposed to go? The team members got their grades, many</p><p>completed their degrees, and their time at Stanford came to an end. The</p><p>prototype, however, needed more work if anything was to become of it.</p><p>That is where our open access shop came in. Without a hiccup, the team of</p><p>Stanford students moved development to TechShop and kept going. It was</p><p>cheap enough that they were able to then go out and find grants to create</p><p>their nonprofit. Since then they have fully developed the blanket, launched</p><p>in multiple countries around the world, and the warmer has saved 5,000</p><p>babies so far.</p><p>But note: the university was not architected to support or sponsor the</p><p>ensuing company. Furthermore, and understandably, the d.school lab is not</p><p>open to the community. It is outside the current mission of university labs to</p><p>be community resources. That has got to change.</p><p>SOLUM</p><p>Solum has a similar story. The company grew out of a Stanford class, in this</p><p>case, the MS&E 273 Technology Venture Formation course. Nick</p><p>Koshnick, Justin White, Mike Preiner, and John Paul Strachan formed a</p><p>team to tackle the problem farmers have of determining how much fertilizer</p><p>to lay down for any given season’s crops. This is a huge issue for farmers.</p><p>Too little fertilizer, and the planned crop yield drops, potentially causing the</p><p>enterprise to fail. Too much fertilizer, and the crop yield might be favorable,</p><p>but it is very expensive. In addition, overfertilizing can result in burning</p><p>and killing the plants. It is, for example, a primary contributor to the large</p><p>dead zone the United States has at the end of the Mississippi River. Nick</p><p>and his team set out to solve these problems. Nick had taken Stanford’s</p><p>Technology Venture Formation course, designed to help graduating students</p><p>develop businesses, and he had just received a PhD from the university, so</p><p>in essence, Stanford launched Nick’s team. But the team didn’t have access</p><p>to a lab.</p><p>That is how I learned about it. I had seen Nick and his team out in the</p><p>shop working on their first prototype, which had led to a very small</p><p>investment round whereupon they moved into the office next to mine.</p><p>Within months, the team had developed multiple prototypes, hired a half a</p><p>dozen employees, and started to burst out of the little office where they</p><p>were working. Very quickly, at least by product development standards,</p><p>they had gone through a series of prototypes, attracted more talent, and</p><p>raised around $2 million in their Series A, at which time they graduated and</p><p>moved out.</p><p>Since then, the company has raised about $20 million total from some</p><p>of Silicon Valley’s top firms and has become a very exciting, award-</p><p>winning agricultural start-up.</p><p>One the keys to Solum’s fast launch was access to a platform that could</p><p>support its development. There was no stage-gated process, no incubator</p><p>boot camp, and no business plan competition. Again, the key was in</p><p>building the prototypes—that is what got them launched. The remarkable</p><p>speed with which Solum was able to go through each prototype was driven</p><p>by direct access to the tools. The team could develop a product and test,</p><p>develop again, and test again. There was no need to ship drawings and test</p><p>rigs all over the world. There were no off-site meetings to schedule with</p><p>design consultants. This was built with speed.</p><p>Once again, there was no real involvement from the university. Nor</p><p>does Stanford have any claim in the company. Had the team done its</p><p>research, design, and company launch on a campus at almost any other</p><p>university in the United States, the university would have claimed</p><p>intellectual property rights and wanted licensing fees. Graduate students at</p><p>many universities don’t own their IPs; the university does. This strikes me</p><p>as an odd arrangement. Sure, if you are working on a grant funded by the</p><p>university and being paid by the university for that research. But why</p><p>should the university own something outside the area of research? And why</p><p>is the licensing so hard?</p><p>This is normal, by the way, for most big companies as well.</p><p>Employment agreements state that the business owns its employees’ ideas,</p><p>whether they were developed on company time or equipment or not. Since</p><p>access to tools has been fairly limited over the years, this arrangement</p><p>hasn’t been fought very much. As access to tools becomes ubiquitous,</p><p>however, I suspect companies are going to get more pushback from their</p><p>employees.</p><p>In the preceding examples, Stanford University had a significant part to</p><p>play in the overall ecosystem of helping to develop these start-ups, but the</p><p>university wasn’t part of the launch. These start-ups did not come out of the</p><p>university’s tech transfer office; there were no government or foundation</p><p>grants supporting them. They just launched the companies themselves</p><p>because they could.</p><p>DRIPTECH</p><p>This start-up is similar to Embrace in that it started as a class project at</p><p>Stanford’s d.school. TechShop didn’t have a lot of engagement with the</p><p>team, but one of its lead engineers, Trevor</p><p>Boswell, used our site for some of the early development of a key</p><p>machine. Driptech was started by Peter Frykman after visiting Ethiopia as</p><p>part of Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class.</p><p>He saw firsthand how difficult irrigation was for small plot farmers and</p><p>developed a super-low-cost drip irrigation system for them. Driptech has</p><p>won various awards, including one from the World Economic Forum.</p><p>COMMUNITY RESOURCE</p><p>A senior executive told me recently that his organization had more</p><p>engineers working outside of R&D than it did in R&D, and that, in fact,</p><p>given the company’s preference for hiring engineering talent and then</p><p>cross-training the talent in other disciplines, it had plenty of engineers in its</p><p>HR, finance, and marketing departments.</p><p>I pointed out that one didn’t have to be an engineer anymore to design,</p><p>develop, and launch a product. The senior executive conceded that, but said</p><p>it was off point. His concern was that literally none of the engineers in the</p><p>company, including those in research and development, could pursue areas</p><p>of research that could help the company innovate outside of those areas of</p><p>research that were already approved, and that many of the talented</p><p>engineers were no longer anywhere near R&D. In a sense, many of them</p><p>were closer to the market in marketing and sales than the R&D team was. In</p><p>theory, marketing and sales have input into the priorities inside a company,</p><p>but certainly not always. So how does one solve the dilemma that great</p><p>minds, insights, and ideas were not being developed?</p><p>This executive was advocating a makerspace membership as a way of</p><p>opening up internal creativity. I could not agree more heartily. But if you</p><p>want to have an even bigger impact, you should open the space up to the</p><p>entire community, universities in town, other manufacturers, high schools,</p><p>elementary schools, start-ups, and other small-to-medium-sized enterprises</p><p>(SMEs). And then if you really wanted to take it to the next level, you</p><p>would wrap it into a national and global network of these spaces.</p><p>Why would one want to reduce the diversity, knowledge, and skills</p><p>available? One answer: intellectual property (IP). But this is a false choice;</p><p>it is not an either-or situation. Yes, IP is important, but if you use it to</p><p>isolate yourself, you will be outpaced by those who have figured out how to</p><p>be more open and yet compete on IP where it matters, protected in open</p><p>environments through cloaking or other mechanisms, including a locked</p><p>private area of one’s own. It is not an either-or; it is just another IP situation</p><p>to manage. IP is already being managed; it can also be managed in</p><p>environments like a makerspace. Furthermore, I have yet to hear of anyone</p><p>stealing IP in our makerspaces, while I always hear people say the</p><p>community has added IP and given it to them—sometimes in patentable</p><p>ways.</p><p>So in an attempt to protect its IP in what I would describe as</p><p>Neanderthal ways, a firm puts itself at risk to be outpaced by firms that</p><p>have figured out how to deal with open innovation and makerspaces.</p><p>TAKE IT UP A LEVEL</p><p>A fab lab is usually around 2,000 square feet or so. A typical hackerspace</p><p>can get as big as 4,000 square feet and sometimes larger. A well-equipped</p><p>makerspace starts at around 13,000 square feet, and a couple of our joint</p><p>projects with Ford and ASU will run around 40,000 square feet in size</p><p>when offices and classrooms are included. But what would happen if we</p><p>took the 5M Project model and scaled up to an innovation hub? This would</p><p>approach more of the size of an industrial sector play, where 250,000 to</p><p>1,000,000 square feet with mixed-use property would be developed in or</p><p>near city centers, redevelopment zones, and universities.</p><p>The largest and most active true office-based incubators that offer start-</p><p>up through midsized office space approach the 200,000-square-foot size.</p><p>The advanced manufacturing platforms envisioned by the Department of</p><p>Commerce run from 50,000 to 100,000 square feet exclusive of office</p><p>support, retail, apartments, or restaurants. Combine that with university</p><p>research or large biotech or nanotech incubators (which tend to be very</p><p>expensive and large), and one could easily see 1 million square feet of</p><p>mixed-use development. The economic benefit, educational support,</p><p>community development, and industry support would be enormous.</p><p>Examples of this size of development are spread out around the world.</p><p>The key difference here is in imbedding the open access component; this</p><p>changes the nature and dynamic of the complex in a very powerful way.</p><p>There is a big opportunity for those existing facilities, to begin retrofitting</p><p>them with FabLabs, hackerspaces, and makerspaces.</p><p>The power of the open space is that students, professors, and university</p><p>lab researchers would now have opportunities to mingle with commercial</p><p>enterprise engineers, local artists, and entrepreneurs. Essentially, these open</p><p>spaces become the innovation commons where anyone can come and work.</p><p>There is a role for the state and foundations as well. Funding for</p><p>makerspaces is still scarce and provided mostly by the well-endowed</p><p>universities, corporations, and middle-class makers. Apart from the</p><p>occasional fab lab in a school setting, communities that are underprivileged,</p><p>poor, disenfranchised, or marginalized cannot yet afford this kind of</p><p>offering. I believe this needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, there are real</p><p>hardware costs, real estate, utilities, and payrolls associated with fab labs,</p><p>hackerspaces, and makerspaces—unlike software, where you can just</p><p>duplicate it, create a school support channel or start-up support channel, and</p><p>give the software away at no marginal cost. Whether through subsidies,</p><p>scholarships, field trips, grants, or training programs, the Maker Movement</p><p>needs to find a way to become more socioeconomically inclusive.</p><p>FOUNDATIONS</p><p>The Maker Movement needs some help from foundations. Early on, it was</p><p>pointed out to me that state educational institutions are not really designed</p><p>to experiment—at least not in the true sense of the word. They need proof</p><p>points from somewhere in order to be able to justify an expense.</p><p>Foundations, on the other hand, help fund experiments, and they create</p><p>metrics (sometimes new metrics) to track and validate the usefulness of an</p><p>innovation. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that exposure to hands-on</p><p>learning and tools can help motivate a child to consider science, technology,</p><p>engineering, or math as a career. My favorite recent example happened with</p><p>a partner of ours at South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual music, film,</p><p>and interactive conference and festival in Austin, Texas, in 2012.</p><p>General Electric had created a traveling road show, GE Garages</p><p>powered by TechShop, in 2012. One of the first stops was at SXSW. We</p><p>had MakerBots (3D printers), Inventables (remarkable materials), and</p><p>TechShop employees spread out around the site running laser cutters,</p><p>welding machines, CNC routers, 3D printers, hand tools, and other tools for</p><p>people to use.</p><p>That first Saturday, a 14-year-old girl stumbled onto the five containers</p><p>of advanced manufacturing equipment on the corner where we had set up,</p><p>and she brought her father over to see what was going on. Little did he</p><p>know, Dad had just lost most of his weekend at SXSW to our site. The girl</p><p>spent four hours on-site that Saturday, learned all about the tools, met our</p><p>staff, hung out with other makers, and learned how to tack weld.</p><p>Yes, you heard me right. As part of the project, we had teamed up with</p><p>GE to give away bicycle racks that were being welded as part of the</p><p>demonstration. Observers were given short instructions on how to tack weld</p><p>and then sent to a station where they were able to help weld together the</p><p>bicycle racks. This girl was very excited about what she had learned and</p><p>came back the second day to start welding a bike rack for her school. Then</p><p>the unexpected happened.</p><p>A group of senior marketing folks from GE came by to see how the</p><p>installation was working. I have to give them credit, this was an installation</p><p>like none I’ve ever seen; working the logistics to get this equipment set up,</p><p>staff trained, and the space opened up to the public in a safe, controlled way</p><p>was very impressive. But before the GE folks approved the next locations,</p><p>they wanted to see this one in action.</p><p>When our newfound friend found out the sponsors were on-site, she</p><p>insisted on meeting them and proceeded to thank them for giving her the</p><p>chance to weld a bike rack for her school even though she had never welded</p><p>before. She told them the installation had changed her life. Based on the</p><p>experience she had had that weekend, she had decided that she was going to</p><p>become an engineer.</p><p>What a great opportunity. Currently, only 10 percent of American</p><p>women pursue engineering as a viable employment option—even during</p><p>the greatest explosion</p><p>of materials knowledge creation and easy-to-use,</p><p>powerful, and cheap tools. Capturing the talent and creativity of half the</p><p>world’s population by encouraging this group to consider STEM careers</p><p>(science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is one of the biggest</p><p>opportunities we have in the world. And we have to get to kids when they</p><p>are young and still deciding what they are “good at” and “not good at”—14</p><p>years old is generally too late.</p><p>What pathways work in getting them excited is a core question, and</p><p>state-run institutions don’t have the funding or bandwidth to drive this type</p><p>of experimentation. Some do, and some will try, but this is the very function</p><p>of foundations and other charitable organizations: to blaze new paths for</p><p>others to follow.</p><p>We are still early on in this movement, so I’m very confident all these</p><p>things will come, but it takes individuals in the right place and at the right</p><p>time to make them happen. It takes vision, risk acceptance, and funding to</p><p>make a real dent in the universe. It is going to take the entire community to</p><p>leverage the emergent opportunity that the Maker Movement is enabling.</p><p>MAKERSPACE AS CATALYST</p><p>Access to tools is so fundamental to economic development, learning, start-</p><p>ups, artists, research, and production that I can see it driving the</p><p>development of entire communities. Much like how a university town can</p><p>grow into a city, so could the well-placed development of tools, training,</p><p>and access grow a vibrant creative cluster in a city. As a way to differentiate</p><p>a city, county or region, the development of open access facilities in</p><p>conjunction with schools, vocational training, and commerce will be huge.</p><p>Already, people have moved to the Bay Area to be near our space. Yes,</p><p>moved. As in relocated themselves and their belongings.</p><p>At TechShop, we see people start companies that couldn’t get started</p><p>any other way. First robotics teams come in and use our space, further</p><p>cementing the career track these kids are interested in. Tools and</p><p>infrastructure will become a key differentiator for some people in choosing</p><p>where they want to live. Knowledge now flows through the Internet;</p><p>coding, calculus, and chemistry can be taught and learned at any high</p><p>school or university; but access to a CNC waterjet for all comers is not</p><p>available on the Internet. Eventually it will be in some form, but it will be</p><p>more expensive than operating it yourself. So right now, there are first-</p><p>mover advantages to be had for the cities that develop these spaces and</p><p>attract the talent to use them. True, because building these spaces is hard,</p><p>physical, and requires more than just desks and heat, there will be a slow</p><p>build out. However, this trend, the third industrial revolution or hardware</p><p>2.0, the Maker Movement revolution, or whatever you want to call it, is</p><p>going to be bigger than the web. With the explosion of mobile, social, and</p><p>gaming incubators being spun up around universities across the world, it</p><p>will be easy to leverage that energy and infrastructure into a hardware</p><p>renaissance—once the tools are available.</p><p>10</p><p>Changing through Participation</p><p>In this chapter, I’m going to talk about how to get engaged with the Maker</p><p>Movement. There are plenty of ways, and I’ll hit a number of them in the</p><p>following pages. The point is simple. Make something, anything.</p><p>MEDIA FUN</p><p>I had a friend who worked for a fitness magazine. He told me that 80</p><p>percent of the readers didn’t work out. I was stunned. I know that many</p><p>might not be working out, but 80 percent? He said being fit was more like</p><p>football, a spectator sport. People liked the content, liked to learn and</p><p>imagine how they might work out, and even liked to plan how they were</p><p>going to work out. They just never get around to it. To illustrate his point,</p><p>he told me how one day when he was at a garage sale, he spied some very</p><p>early weight lifting dumbbells in the man’s garage. My friend likes to</p><p>collect early versions of workout gear, so he went over to inspect the</p><p>weights, which were from the early 1960s. It was pretty rare stuff.</p><p>He asked the 70-year-old owner if they were for sale. “Oh, no, I’ve</p><p>been meaning to start using those,” replied the man. “I’ll probably start next</p><p>week.” They were still in the original box. This man was going to get</p><p>started “next week” for decades.</p><p>I learned a couple of things from this. First, just because everyone who</p><p>reads a magazine is not a participant doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of</p><p>participants. They just consume the hobby in a different way. But because</p><p>they are supporting the movement through reading about it and buying the</p><p>occasional kit or package (used or not), they help support the overall</p><p>movement. Second, the level of passion and belief about the value of the</p><p>movement goes very deep. That owner would never sell those weights. The</p><p>fitness lifestyle consumer, even if he didn’t work out, still believed that any</p><p>day now, even after decades of not working out, he was about to start</p><p>working out. What is nice here, though, is that even in his delusional belief</p><p>that he was going to start lifting any day he helped perpetuate the</p><p>movement through his belief in the movement.</p><p>Make: magazine was modeled after the old Popular Mechanics</p><p>magazine. The idea was that there used to be a lot of instructions on how to</p><p>actually make things in Popular Mechanics. I love both magazines. There’s</p><p>an entire television channel dedicated to do-it-yourself projects, and shows</p><p>like Mythbusters, Monster Garage, various build shows, and even Iron Chef</p><p>or The Food Channel are all about making things. But just because you</p><p>watch Iron Chef doesn’t mean you are a great cook. You might be one day,</p><p>you may plan to be one day, but for now you enjoy it vicariously.</p><p>There are a range of reasons that people read, watch, and learn, but</p><p>don’t do. I’m thankful for them because they encourage the basic</p><p>informational providers to keep publishing. But for a movement to really</p><p>sustain itself, it has to have doers.</p><p>STEM</p><p>Science, technology, engineering, and math classes, or STEM as they are</p><p>known within the educational community, have become a rallying cry. It</p><p>makes a lot of sense. If we (this is the global we) can get more people</p><p>working in these fields, the world is more likely to innovate its way out of</p><p>many of its current most pressing technical challenges. The key, though, to</p><p>getting kids excited is to engage them in hands-on activities with the age-</p><p>appropriate technology.</p><p>I’m a big believer in the First Robotics program, LEGO’s robot</p><p>program, and the F1 Racing build program where kids get to make models</p><p>of race cars and then race them with radio controls. These programs are fun,</p><p>educational, and addictive. They do require funds for the equipment, space,</p><p>and training facilities. It is unfortunate that most schools lack the resources</p><p>to fund these types of activities. Perhaps a central resource within a</p><p>community could be utilized though that creates significant transportation</p><p>issues.</p><p>MINI MAKER FAIRES</p><p>Maker Faire has a nice streamlined process for authorizing local mini-</p><p>Maker Faires. A typical Mini Maker Faire will have 50 to 100 maker</p><p>booths, with the usual eclectic variety of people, projects, and products seen</p><p>at a full-sized Maker Faire. Along with the quilts, jewelry, paintings, and</p><p>arts and handicrafts that are staples of traditional art fairs, one will find</p><p>booths spilling over with robots, chemistry sets, physics toys, steam punk</p><p>outfits and devices, robots, 3D printers, and electronics. These events are</p><p>particularly family friendly and unleash children’s imaginations. They make</p><p>for a great weekend. If there isn’t one in your city, organize one.</p><p>BRIGHTWORKS</p><p>Gever Tulley is an inspiration. At a TED talk in Monterey, California, a few</p><p>years ago, he introduced the core of his book in progress. “Five Dangerous</p><p>Things You Should Let Your Kids Do” was an excerpt from his book 50</p><p>Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do). With a nod to safety,</p><p>he proceeded to tell the audience that they should let their</p><p>I couldn’t agree more.</p><p>The real power of this revolution is its democratizing effects. Now,</p><p>almost anyone can innovate. Now, almost anyone can make. Now, with the</p><p>tools available at a makerspace, anyone can change the world.</p><p>Every revolution needs an army. That is the real purpose of this book.</p><p>To use revolutionary language, my objective with this book is to radicalize</p><p>you and get you to become a soldier in this army. Not so that we can</p><p>destroy some nation, political party, or social movement, but so that we can</p><p>collectively use our creativity to attack the world’s greatest problems and</p><p>meet people’s most urgent needs. So that we can reduce the size of the dead-</p><p>zone at the end of the Mississippi River, like one team has begun to do; or</p><p>so that we can reduce the size of the carbon footprint of all the computer</p><p>servers running the Internet, as another team did; or so that we can create</p><p>the world’s least expensive drip irrigation system and help with the global</p><p>water crisis; or open up the merchant banking systems or literally save tens</p><p>of thousands of babies’ lives, like other teams have done. We need you to</p><p>add your creativity, enthusiasm, experience, knowledge, and skill to the</p><p>mix. We need millions of people to join this movement.</p><p>So please read on. You can’t help but be inspired by the stories you will</p><p>read. If you do take on the challenge of making, it will change you in</p><p>exciting and surprising ways—and you might just change the world.</p><p>1</p><p>Maker Movement Manifesto</p><p>In the spirit of making, I strongly suggest you take this manifesto, make</p><p>changes to it, and make it your own. That is the point of making.</p><p>MAKE</p><p>Making is fundamental to what it means to be human.</p><p>We must make, create, and express ourselves to feel</p><p>whole. There is something unique about making</p><p>physical things. Things we make are like little pieces</p><p>of us and seem to embody portions of our soul.</p><p>Make. Just make. This is the key. The world is a better place as a</p><p>participatory sport. Being creative, the act of creating and making, is</p><p>actually fundamental to what it means to be human. Secular philosophers</p><p>like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Carl Jung, and Abraham Maslow all</p><p>came to the conclusion that creative acts are fundamental. Physical making</p><p>is more personally fulfilling than virtual making. I think this has to do with</p><p>its tangibility; you can touch it and sometimes smell and taste it. A great</p><p>sentence or well-written blog is creative and makes you feel good about</p><p>what you have accomplished, but it is not the same as the satisfaction that</p><p>comes from the physical labor involved in making something physical.</p><p>If you come from a Judeo-Christian religious background, whether</p><p>Jewish, Protestant, or Catholic, then you know that the first book of the</p><p>Torah or Old Testament is the book of Genesis. Read Genesis Chapter 1</p><p>closely. Whether you believe in the literal interpretation of Creation or not,</p><p>we can probably agree on two things coming out of this chapter. God is a</p><p>maker, and he made us in his image. It is a very powerful introduction to</p><p>God and who we are as humans. What do you know about humanity by the</p><p>end of the chapter? It says, “God made” (or “let,” or “created”) some 15</p><p>times and ends with making people in his image. At the end of Genesis 1,</p><p>we may not know much about God or humans, but we do know one thing</p><p>for sure: we were made to make.</p><p>There is nothing that can replace making—philosophers, religious</p><p>scholars, and personal experience make that clear. Wars have been fought</p><p>when the common people thought they were going to lose access to</p><p>ownership of their own productive tools. So the first thing we must do is</p><p>make. The do-it-yourself (DIY) home improvement industry in the United</p><p>States is worth over $700 billion. The hobbyist segment is worth over $25</p><p>billion. The most valuable segment of the $700 billion DIY is the perpetual</p><p>remodeler, specifically those who have enough money to let business</p><p>professionals do the work for them, but don’t. You might know or even be</p><p>one of these people. In your heart of hearts, you know you don’t really need</p><p>to redo the bathroom, or certainly not the way you plan to do it, yourself.</p><p>But you do it anyway. This is because there is more satisfaction in</p><p>completing the remodel yourself.</p><p>A makerspace is a center or workspace where like-minded people get</p><p>together to make things. Some makerspace members are designers, writers,</p><p>practitioners of medicine or law, architects, and other white-collar types</p><p>who come in and start making things for themselves, their families, and</p><p>friends. They spend time in makerspaces because they just love to make</p><p>things. They don’t need to make Christmas presents; they want to.</p><p>Tina Albin-Lax had made a New Year’s resolution for 2012. She was</p><p>going to learn how to make something. She signed up for TechShop’s basic</p><p>laser cutter class and has never been the same since. For $60, she learned</p><p>how to use a laser cutter. Then she booked it for the next day so she could</p><p>practice what she had just learned, but she needed a project to practice on.</p><p>As luck would have it, that evening Tina’s sibling called and invited her to</p><p>attend her nephew’s birthday party that weekend. With a flash of brilliance,</p><p>Tina asked for the names of all the children who would be at the party.</p><p>The next day Tina used her new training to make cupcake toppers for</p><p>each of the party attendees. Using the laser cutter, Tina cut out the name of</p><p>each child and etched in some nice patterns. She finished them with a nice</p><p>glossy coat and that weekend put one on each child’s cupcake. What child</p><p>doesn’t love to see his or her name emblazoned on something? Particularly</p><p>something chocolaty and sweet? Not surprisingly, the parents wanted</p><p>cupcake toppers for the rest of their children and then wanted them for their</p><p>children’s parties. It snowballed.</p><p>Soon Tina had an online store (www.etsy.com). Then she began</p><p>teaching classes on how to launch a business and had a great mention in</p><p>Martha Stewart’s magazine, Martha Stewart Living. Her phone couldn’t</p><p>make it through the day from all the order notifications she was getting.</p><p>Last I heard, she was working on a book.</p><p>This all came about from a simple desire to make something for the</p><p>first time since sixth grade. An accidental entrepreneur was born. And what</p><p>was Tina’s background? She was a labor organizer.</p><p>I grew up playing neighborhood football with a kid named Ben Parks.</p><p>His dad was a ceramic artist and had throwing wheels, clay, and amazing</p><p>glazes around his house. One day his dad invited us all to come out and</p><p>throw a pot. What a great afternoon. I attempted to make a large vase—and</p><p>after what seemed like dozens of attempts and lots of help and</p><p>encouragement—I ended up with a sad-looking, lopsided, very small coin</p><p>holder. It will hold a couple of dollars’ worth of quarters. I glazed it</p><p>beautifully with help from Ben’s dad. A couple of days later, after it had</p><p>been fired, I got to take it home.</p><p>This thing is an ugly duckling that will never grow up, but guess what .</p><p>. . I still have it. It’s small enough that I’ve taken it everywhere I have</p><p>moved. Its only value is that I made it and it is some kind of memento from</p><p>my childhood. Looking back, I realize now that I was not the target of that</p><p>day of making, though I still appreciate the gift it was. Ben eventually</p><p>became a ceramic artist himself, following in his father’s footsteps. There is</p><p>something fundamental about making.</p><p>SHARE</p><p>Sharing what you have made and what you know</p><p>about making with others is the method by</p><p>which a maker’s feeling of wholeness</p><p>is achieved. You cannot make and not share.</p><p>We make to share. Each of us is wired to show off what we have made. We</p><p>get a lot of satisfaction out of the making, but the real payoff is in sharing.</p><p>http://www.etsy.com/</p><p>Some people are coy about showing their work off. Others are just terrified.</p><p>One of the reasons we may have stopped making is that what we set out to</p><p>make and what we ended up with may not match very well. Or others may</p><p>have ridiculed</p><p>children play</p><p>with fire, own a pocketknife, and do other dangerous things.1 Not too</p><p>surprisingly, no publisher would touch it. So he self-published, and it</p><p>became a global bestseller. It helped that one country tried to ban the book.</p><p>I mentioned his camps earlier where the design principle was to make sure</p><p>there was a reasonable chance of the build being a failure.</p><p>He tells a story of one of the first camps where the group was building</p><p>a small roller coaster and the design was given over to the kid who could</p><p>draw the best. The young kid then drew a fanciful roller coaster with a jump</p><p>over a pit of fire. Gever couldn’t get the child to give up on the pit of fire</p><p>jump until he pointed out that not only might it not work well, but the</p><p>child’s mother might fall into it. Reluctantly, the child relented. And they</p><p>eventually got a small backyard roller coaster working.</p><p>Gever has gone on to create a school, Brightworks, that incorporates</p><p>some of the best current thinking around project-based, cross-disciplinary</p><p>education. I highly recommend finding local schools that are looking to</p><p>incorporate this kind of instruction into their offerings or have project-based</p><p>learning as a core principle. If there isn’t one in your community, maybe it’s</p><p>time to start one.</p><p>MAKE SOMETHING</p><p>One of the ways to get hooked on making is to build or construct something</p><p>and give it to a friend or family member. If thought goes into the item</p><p>beforehand and it is crafted with a specific person in mind, there is almost</p><p>no greater feeling than giving away something you have made. At some of</p><p>the events where I’m asked to speak, I talk about “radicalizing” an</p><p>audience. Not in a political way, but in a personal way. I cover some of the</p><p>material in this book and then challenge the audience to participate in the</p><p>revolution simply by making something for a loved one. I then tell them</p><p>that after they have given that something away, they need to reflect on how</p><p>they feel about the process and themselves and the gift after they have given</p><p>it away. Making a gift is profoundly different from running down to the</p><p>store and buying something for someone. This act is part of how one</p><p>radicalizes another person. Get the person to do something explicitly in</p><p>support of a revolution and do it with deep emotional and personal value.</p><p>The gift-giving trick is very powerful, transformational, and life changing.</p><p>Here’s the thing: The gift doesn’t have to be designed or made from</p><p>scratch in order to be emotionally significant to either the giver or the</p><p>receiver. Simply modifying or having input into a design can make the</p><p>design yours.</p><p>Years ago, I led a team that put interactive multimedia printing kiosks</p><p>into Walmart and Staples. These machines were amazing. Using a laser</p><p>printer and an advanced printing cabinet, one could make business cards,</p><p>letterhead, certificates, postcards, and labels instantly. We hired some</p><p>world-class designers to help us create the best designs; we had a software</p><p>intelligence program that would not allow one to make a bad-looking card</p><p>or letterhead. All the user had to do was enter the relevant information onto</p><p>a form at the start and begin making selections. The program would refine</p><p>and develop a business card. At the end, a custom card would be printed</p><p>out. It was a nice system.</p><p>One of the big surprises for me came when we interviewed people</p><p>about their purchases. First, they were paying as much as 20 cents per</p><p>business card when they could have gone to a printer and gotten 500 for</p><p>$19.95 or less. But most important, the purchasers would tell us that they</p><p>loved the fact that they got to design the card. They would hold it up and</p><p>with pride of ownership say, “Look what I made.”</p><p>This floored me, for the customers didn’t design the business card; we</p><p>did. They didn’t make it look good; we designed the system so they</p><p>couldn’t make their product look bad. Yet because they input their address</p><p>and name, selected a font (from a carefully restricted set of fonts) and</p><p>design (that we had chosen to match the font and other elements on the</p><p>card), customers felt they had designed their cards. You don’t have to grow</p><p>the tree, cut the timber, plane and mill it, and then lathe and sand it to feel</p><p>like you “made” a picture frame. No. Even if all you do is embellish it with</p><p>paint or etch it with a laser cutter, you can say with pride, “Look what I</p><p>made.”</p><p>Recently, this was driven home for me again. At TechShop, we host</p><p>many corporate events. One of them provides participants with the</p><p>opportunity to use the plasma cutter (a machine that uses electricity and air</p><p>to create a plasma knife that cuts through steel) to cut out their company</p><p>logo. The group then gets to weld it, under careful watch of one of our</p><p>Dream Consultants. For this particular event, 30 executives were coming,</p><p>so we precut 28 company logos to help speed up the process.</p><p>The plasma cutter is fun; it cuts steel like butter, melting away the steel</p><p>quickly. The evening of the event, in front of all the executives, a Dream</p><p>Consultant loaded the logo into the computer program, hit the button to start</p><p>the cut, and 20 to 30 seconds later the cut piece was ready to be dropped</p><p>into a bucket of water for cooling. A big billow of steam came out with a</p><p>nice sizzle from the water boiling instantly when it touched the hot steel.</p><p>The Dream Consultant demonstrated the process twice to show the</p><p>executives how the process worked and then started to distribute the precut</p><p>steel. The executives would have none of it. They wanted to “make it</p><p>themselves.”</p><p>I almost laughed. We grabbed the design, scaled it, prepared it, and set</p><p>up the machine code and machine. All that was left for the participants to</p><p>do was to hit the “start” button on the computer screen, pick up the piece</p><p>with a pair of tongs at the end of the job, and plunge it into the water. But</p><p>the group members still felt like they had “made” their industrial logo art</p><p>because they got to hit the “start” button. The event ended up running 30</p><p>minutes overtime just so everyone could stand around watching one another</p><p>“make” the company logo.</p><p>All this is to say, you can start on your own road to becoming a maker</p><p>just by modifying existing things to add your piece of effort, design, or</p><p>panache. It lowers the hurdle while delivering much of the physiological</p><p>benefit. Start small and build.</p><p>SOFTWARE</p><p>Play with software. I’m a big fan of Autodesk, whose senior management</p><p>team is made up of makers. Autodesk has gotten serious about consumer</p><p>software and making it easier to design. The consumer software now</p><p>includes a free 3D scanner application that can be used with a smartphone,</p><p>and a great “creature” making software that allows one to create creatures</p><p>on an iPad. It is easy enough to use that an eight-year-old can do it.</p><p>Just as my generation had to learn how to use Microsoft Word,</p><p>PowerPoint, and Excel, if not HTML, the next generation will become</p><p>fluent in polygons and 3D printing. It’s easy to get started with some great</p><p>free or low-cost design packages, many from Autodesk. With the basic</p><p>software and access to the libraries of predesigned things on the Autodesk</p><p>website, on Thingiverse.com, or in unlikely places like McMasterCarr.com,</p><p>you can participate in the next revolution.</p><p>3D PRINTER</p><p>I talked at length about 3D printers earlier, but I want to come back in this</p><p>chapter and drive the point home. Though 3D printers have a limited range</p><p>of capabilities, they are wonderful tools for creating prototypes and toys,</p><p>and they have great educational value. For the play value, toys, and</p><p>prototypes you can make in your home, I strongly suggest you invest in one</p><p>of these amazing machines or get access to one somehow. They are just too</p><p>much fun. When combined with easy-to-use software, you will be able to</p><p>work with your young children, create a design together, and print it out</p><p>today. I suspect a 3D printer will become the breakout hit of a Christmas</p><p>season sometime soon. And 30 years from now, your children will</p><p>remember being introduced</p><p>to the future through your giving them access to</p><p>just such a machine.</p><p>GROW SOMETHING</p><p>Let’s not forget biology. First, planting and growing is a form of making.</p><p>With less than 3 percent of people in the United States employed as</p><p>farmers, we forget this. A great deal of satisfaction is to be had in having a</p><p>garden out back where you grow some of your own food. It can be a lot of</p><p>fun and great family time. The food is usually better for you, tastier, and can</p><p>also be cheaper than store-bought produce.</p><p>Or start a biolab in your community. Check out diybio.org to find a lab</p><p>near where you live. I found Genspace in Brooklyn while scouting for a</p><p>location there. Up on the seventh floor of an old bank building is the first</p><p>level-one safety, open access, DIY biolab in the United States. As I got the</p><p>tour, my guide let me know that Genspace had contacted Homeland</p><p>Security ahead of time to let the agency know what it was doing. Genspace</p><p>also pulled together an advisory board to oversee safety, only allows work</p><p>on biologics that are harmless, and has an amazing group of founders and</p><p>members. There aren’t many of these labs now in the United States or</p><p>around the world, but because the costs to get started are low for entry-level</p><p>exploration, I expect to see many more. If you have a biotech firm in the</p><p>area, it should be sponsoring its own Genspace equivalent as a community</p><p>outreach effort.</p><p>MAKER VACATION</p><p>Take a maker vacation and book some learning time at a makerspace. A</p><p>number of people take short, weekend, or even extended vacations hanging</p><p>out in San Francisco and plugging into our space. A few have come for a</p><p>month or even two. They schedule a ton of classes at the start of the month</p><p>right as the class list is posted and start taking classes back-to-back-to-back.</p><p>It is a great way to get plugged into the local maker community. These folks</p><p>meet a bunch of other students, most of the instructors, and since they are</p><p>around for a day, week, or month, they get to know the staff. They become</p><p>part of the fabric of the community quickly, learning as they go, joining</p><p>other projects and creating their own, bringing in family members and</p><p>friends throughout the month as people in their lives come visit them on</p><p>vacation. It is an amazing way to jump into the maker scene.</p><p>Another vacation option is to organize it around a Mini Maker Faire, or</p><p>maybe even one of the bigger ones. I know plenty of people who take a</p><p>long weekend to enjoy the Maker Faire as much as they can. The Bay Area</p><p>and New York Maker Faires along with the U.K. Maker Faire take place</p><p>every year.</p><p>MOVE</p><p>Most of us don’t have the flexibility to jump in this deeply, but a number of</p><p>people have relocated to be close to our shops.</p><p>When I was at SXSW in Austin, Texas, this year, I met someone who</p><p>did this. This former Microsoft employee from Seattle had been waiting for</p><p>us to open a location in a city with a lower cost of living in the South.</p><p>Within a few months of our opening in Round Rock, Texas, 20 minutes</p><p>north of Austin, the man moved out of Seattle and into Austin. What was</p><p>really interesting with him was that unlike the others I know who have</p><p>moved to be closer to our makerspace, he did it for general reasons—he</p><p>simply wanted to be close to a shop. All the others I’ve met had some kind</p><p>of specific business-related project they needed to get done. I’ve met people</p><p>who moved from a low-cost area like Phoenix, Arizona, to the Bay Area</p><p>because the project they needed to complete couldn’t be done any other</p><p>way. Access to tools is a great motivator.</p><p>JUST DO IT</p><p>Find a project that you can work on where you have the tools you need</p><p>already. Lowe’s has an entire selection of projects, as does</p><p>Instructables.com and other websites. You never know what might happen.</p><p>Remember Tina Lax from earlier? She committed herself to make</p><p>something and ended up running a business. David Lang started by writing</p><p>a blog, “Zero to Maker,” and now owns a robot company.</p><p>I met a man a couple of weeks ago who had dreadlocks down to his</p><p>knees, shredded jeans, and a leather jacket with amazing etchings all over it.</p><p>I went over to see what he was working on and discovered another</p><p>accidental entrepreneur. He was making leather dog collars using the laser</p><p>cutter. He said he had made himself a leather choker with all kinds of</p><p>etchings and studs on it, and one of his acquaintances wanted one like it for</p><p>his dog. Then a local pet store wanted some, and then so did another, and</p><p>now he was supplementing his living making leather dog collars, after</p><p>taking just one class. Yes, one class. Sixty dollars for the class and less than</p><p>three hours of instruction.</p><p>Another new friend is a semiretired software exec who just wanted to</p><p>learn how to make things. Within a few weeks, he was making all kinds of</p><p>things for his child’s school: laser-cut invitations for an event coming up,</p><p>stage props for the school play. Then an arbor for a garden project and an</p><p>elaborate CNC-cut entryway for a fund-raising gala. Most recently, he</p><p>signed on with some other members to launch a start-up.</p><p>LITTLEBITS, ADAFRUIT, AND ARDUINO</p><p>If you don’t have access to much in the way of a makerspace, I would</p><p>recommend getting started with a transitional technology. Some ideas?</p><p>Building a drone, buying some electronics projects, or working with the</p><p>little folks in your life with littleBits.</p><p>A project that came out the MIT Media Lab, littleBits is like little</p><p>LEGOs that snap together using magnets in an array of sequences that</p><p>allow children of all ages to explore the fun of assembling electronics</p><p>without having to solder and understand much of anything. It really is like</p><p>LEGOs for electronics. A small kit will let you make a buzzer, a light, or</p><p>other thing and hook up sensors to it. Press on the pressure pad, and it lights</p><p>up. Put in a motion sensor and wave at it. With dozens of other ways to</p><p>interact with the pieces, they are a lot of fun.</p><p>Adafruit and SparkFun have a wide array of projects, beginning with</p><p>ones that are a step up from littleBits and all the way up to robots. They are</p><p>a great resource for electronic fun, including electronic fashion accessories.</p><p>There is something here for everyone. Both are big supporters of the</p><p>Arduino open source controller hardware.</p><p>The next step up, complexity-wise, is Arduino. A microcontroller that</p><p>helps to bridge electronics and computers into the real world through</p><p>sensors, motors, and other devices, it is a very powerful and relatively easy-</p><p>to-learn platform that will open up the world of robots, sensors, and</p><p>computer-controlled Internet of Things to the relative novice. Some</p><p>learning is required here, but it is a truly power device, and even Radio</p><p>Shack now carries Arduino boards.</p><p>COMMUNITY COLLEGES</p><p>Jim Newton used to teach a “combat robotics” class at a junior college in</p><p>California. He did it so that he could have access to the school’s machine</p><p>shop. He would show up as early as he could, often an hour before class,</p><p>and stay long after the class was over, to work on his projects. Then a funny</p><p>thing happened. He let his students know that he didn’t mind if they wanted</p><p>to stay late or come early. Many did. The following semester, some of the</p><p>students came back. They already had robots, so Jim let them work on their</p><p>projects, and then the following semester almost no one who signed up for</p><p>the class was actually working on the class material.</p><p>It was a nice little hack to get access to the tools in the community</p><p>college. Eventually, the school shut this program down. As they say, no</p><p>good deed goes unpunished. Take the woodworking, metalworking, or</p><p>electronics class at your local community college or continuing education</p><p>program at a local university. See what you can make. Jim’s need for access</p><p>to these kinds of tools led him to build TechShop.</p><p>HACKERSPACE</p><p>Join or set up a hackerspace. These have sprung up around the world.</p><p>Hackerspaces.org has basic instructions on how to set one up. Be careful</p><p>though. There are some liability issues some of these spaces are ignoring,</p><p>specifically, general liability and instructor liability insurance. It turns out</p><p>that if an instructor teaches welding wrong and a student goes out and burns</p><p>a building down or hurts someone, the instructor could be personally liable</p><p>for damages, as could the hosting organization.</p><p>Hackerspaces have to carry instructor liability insurance, and it is not</p><p>cheap. If the space can be tied in to a local educational institution, much of</p><p>this can be mitigated, but not that many of the current spaces have that</p><p>connection or the insurance. In their passion to get something done, they</p><p>have just gone out and done it. This is laudable, but it can be very risky. Do</p><p>your homework first. If you can find the right space and get the insurance, it</p><p>is a great hobby.</p><p>PERSONAL STORY</p><p>A few years ago, I was running out of time to buy my wife a Valentine’s</p><p>Day present. Like a typical guy, I had waited until the last minute. I had to</p><p>get to the airport quickly if I was even going to get home that night. I</p><p>wasn’t sure how good a Valentine’s gift I would find at the airport. So I</p><p>decided to make something. Quickly. Thankfully, there are plenty of</p><p>supplies and scraps floating around our store, and I was able to find some</p><p>red plastic sheets perfect for cutting with the laser cutter.</p><p>I went on the Internet and found a line art version of a rose,</p><p>downloaded it, and then modified it to give it a little more style and</p><p>panache. I reworked the design so that our laser cutter would cut it. Had I</p><p>been thinking, I would also have cut out a stand. Fortunately, there was a</p><p>break in the reservations at the laser cutter, and I jumped on. I added a nice</p><p>“I love you” sentiment, a nickname, and I cut it. It worked on my first try. It</p><p>only took about 20 minutes to make and left me with 20 minutes to spare at</p><p>the airport. Just enough time to find a blank card to go with the gift.</p><p>That night when I got home and gave my wife her Valentine’s gift, I</p><p>was a hero. Lesson learned—again. Something I make and imbue with</p><p>meaning is more touching than dozens of roses, pounds of chocolate, or</p><p>fancy dinners. She still has that little piece of red plastic set up with her</p><p>other most meaningful mementos.</p><p>This is one revolution that you will want to join. It doesn’t just change</p><p>you, it has the power to change those around you as well.</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>We are standing on the foundation of the largest explosion of creativity,</p><p>knowledge creation, and innovation in all of human history. We do stand on</p><p>the shoulders of the greats. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who</p><p>wait to see what we will do in the next 10 to 20 years of profound</p><p>innovation. Call it what you will, the next industrial revolution, the Maker</p><p>Movement, the creative revolution, the third industrial revolution, whatever</p><p>you like. History will name it once it is over. The real question is, what are</p><p>you going to do?</p><p>I am calling on you to join us. There are a lot of different ways to</p><p>participate. You can start your own maker journey this week. Make</p><p>something for someone else and then give it to him or her. The experience</p><p>will change both you and the recipient. And you will begin to see the power</p><p>of connecting with your inner maker.</p><p>I am also asking you to become a soldier or radical, if you will, and</p><p>help with the movement overall. Makers need lots of help. Our message is</p><p>really just beginning to get out. There are enormous political, social,</p><p>educational, and structural things that need to change to fully leverage the</p><p>movement. I’m confident that nothing is going to get in its way and that</p><p>eventually it will become the massive force for creativity around the globe</p><p>it deserves to become.</p><p>The real question, is how much time is it going to take? Everett Rogers</p><p>in his famous work Diffusion of Innovations identified the process and</p><p>amount of time a major innovation takes to be adopted. Across multiple</p><p>domains and various innovations he discovered the basic outlines of how</p><p>innovations diffuse into a target population. He also showed that they</p><p>generally take a full 25 years to work their way fully into the lives of that</p><p>target population. I was at a symposium recently where it was postulated</p><p>that because of modern communication methods, Google, and the Internet,</p><p>the rate of innovation diffusion may be increasing. There were no data</p><p>offered, just a postulation. The key thing that you can do to help is to try to</p><p>increase the speed with which Maker Movement ideas are spread. We really</p><p>should not have to wait 25 years in this day and age for a movement this</p><p>important to spread.</p><p>TRENDS</p><p>We live in an age where everything is changing more quickly than ever. The</p><p>rate of change is literally speeding up. I owe my friends at Singularity</p><p>University (SU) at NASA Ames for helping me to understand this better.</p><p>Ray Kurzweil’s book The Singularity Is Near is the basis of SU.1 What he</p><p>and they show is that a stunning number of technologies and trends are on a</p><p>hypergrowth curve. Technically, the curve is logarithmic, a steady doubling</p><p>of capability over a certain period of time. Moore’s law is the most famous</p><p>of the curves, but Ray points out many, many more. A result of the</p><p>convergence of many of these stunning curves is that technology is growing</p><p>at an exponential rate. Everyone is familiar with information technology;</p><p>less understood is the biotech, nanotech, screen technology, genetics, and</p><p>other areas that are seeing this kind of exponential growth.</p><p>As humans, we are not really wired to understand nonlinear growth</p><p>rates. We have a hard time planning for them, leveraging them,</p><p>understanding them, or imagining a future impacted by them. The SU</p><p>curriculum and experience is designed to help people begin to think</p><p>exponentially.</p><p>When you combine these authors’ ideas concerning technology change</p><p>with technology access through open software, open hardware, software</p><p>incubator, and makerspaces along with an exponential increase in the</p><p>number of people who will have access to the tools needed to help drive</p><p>innovation across multiple industries, you begin to see infinite possibilities.</p><p>POLICY</p><p>The policy implications of the Maker Movement and nonlinear</p><p>technological improvements are huge. If we believe in manufacturing as an</p><p>important component in an economy, then the distribution and diffusion of</p><p>easy-to-use, powerful, and cheap access to the right tools are critical to the</p><p>success of every industrialized economy, particularly ones that want to</p><p>leverage the coming technological advances across so many industries.</p><p>Waiting for the markets and general social awareness to build the</p><p>movement naturally and organically organize around this new world does</p><p>not serve policy or humanity very well. The desired future can be reached</p><p>more quickly with careful investment and thoughtful intervention in the</p><p>right sectors.</p><p>There are multiple multibillion-dollar efforts underway in the United</p><p>States to try to accelerate energy, cleantech, biotech, nanotech, and</p><p>advanced manufacturing. For that same kind of money, we could build a</p><p>thousand makerspaces and put one to two million of our most creative</p><p>minds to work in their spare time. Or we could direct libraries to spend</p><p>some of their grant money on supporting makerspace memberships. Some</p><p>writers have suggested cohosting spaces with libraries. This is an interesting</p><p>idea that might lead to more library fires from welders and laser cutters, so</p><p>I’m not very excited about putting a full makerspace in a library. But it</p><p>could work with the right planning and design, and access is the most</p><p>important attribute of a makerspace. This attitude and approach is similar to</p><p>a library’s.</p><p>The entire educational system in the United States is outdated—built</p><p>for a world that no longer exists, in a world that is continuing to change</p><p>very rapidly. We have an incredible opportunity—and responsibility—to</p><p>explore what education means in a fully networked, Internet-enabled, and</p><p>maker-space–fueled world. Creating innovators and technology</p><p>entrepreneurs should be one of education’s top priorities.</p><p>The U.S. government should have a Maker Corps. Like the other corps,</p><p>AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps, it would be a government-funded effort</p><p>to help our best, brightest, and most creative change the world through</p><p>meeting real-world needs with a combination of access to raw materials,</p><p>maker-spaces, and communities in need. It could be deployed after natural</p><p>disasters; makers could show up with containers full of material,</p><p>equipment, hands, education, and training.</p><p>I’m sure you can come up with at least a half a dozen of your own</p><p>ideas. You should.</p><p>RESULTS</p><p>Buried in this manifesto are a lot very cool, fun, and often powerful</p><p>inventions. Just to remind you of some of them, and maybe introduce you to</p><p>a couple that I didn’t describe earlier, these are the types of projects that can</p><p>come out of makerspaces in your community once the makerspaces are</p><p>built: a desktop diamond manufacturing device, a fusion reactor, bamboo</p><p>jewelry, the world’s cheapest drip irrigation system, a GPS-enabled nitrogen</p><p>detection device, Square, DODOcase, SFMade, Type A Machines, the</p><p>world’s fastest electric motorcycle, the world’s most efficient data cooling</p><p>center, a CubeSat miniature satellite, a 3D printer, a jet pack, fashion week</p><p>competitors, carbon fiber guitars, world-class cellos, the Lumio lamp, a</p><p>folding kayak, the C-Loop camera strap mount, the Oona smartphone stand,</p><p>Better Off Wed cake toppers, Hugalopes, One Degree Watches, the Giraffe</p><p>remote-controlled videoconference telepresence robots, ProtoTank</p><p>hardware prototyping group, Driptech, and many, many more.</p><p>As more of the tools of manufacturing become available, as they get</p><p>easier to use and more affordable, more and more people will gain access to</p><p>them. As this continues to happen, an explosion in new innovative hardware</p><p>ideas will develop and spread around the world. As the Internet gets hooked</p><p>up to more devices, sensors, robots, switches, and controls and creates the</p><p>Internet of Things, the opportunity for creating labor-saving devices,</p><p>sensors that can reduce injury, tell us of impending failure, or even fix</p><p>themselves, our lives will change and improve.</p><p>FINALLY</p><p>Each evening in makerspaces across the United States, the most inventive,</p><p>creative, focused, and entrepreneurial people in any given city get together</p><p>to learn, meet, teach, and make. They hang out in the open space and swap</p><p>ideas. They help one another on their projects, art, and products. They learn</p><p>from one another how to use new tools in new ways. They take classes, host</p><p>events, attend meetings, and pick up new skills. They make new friends,</p><p>find business partners, discover new customers, hire new employees, and</p><p>get or create jobs. These spaces become the highest concentration of a</p><p>multitalented cross section of the creative class ever assembled in each city.</p><p>It becomes the aggregator of the best hardware-focused ideas in the city. It</p><p>becomes a cathedral of creativity. All it is missing is you.</p><p>Let me finish with an invitation to come on out and take a free tour of</p><p>one of our shop locations. These are friendly places, and we like to share.</p><p>But be ready at the end of the tour for our basic question: What do you want</p><p>to make? And be ready to develop into a new version of you, because</p><p>answering that question could change your life or even the world.</p><p>Notes</p><p>Chapter 1</p><p>1. In a chapter called “Failing Free” in his book Here Comes Everybody,</p><p>Clay Shirky focuses on open source software and self-organizing online</p><p>social phenomena wherein experimentation is fostered in such a way that</p><p>inventors fail fast and, resultantly, succeed faster. I’m extending the idea</p><p>to include the physical world, as the inputs to production, labor, and</p><p>capital (equipment and resources) can now be acquired with the</p><p>equivalent of disposable income. From a macroeconomic perspective,</p><p>moving money from leisure pursuits to innovative investments makes the</p><p>resultant inventions free.</p><p>2. Steven Wheelwright and Kim B. Clark, Revolutionizing Product</p><p>Development (New York: The Free Press, 1992), p. 22.</p><p>Chapter 4</p><p>1. Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, Michael D. Smith, “The Longer Tail:</p><p>The Changing Shape of Amazon’s Sales Distribution Curve,” September</p><p>2010, p. 10. Social Science Research Network.</p><p>ssrn.com/abstract=1679991.</p><p>2. Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail,” Wired October 2004. Available at the</p><p>Wired archive, http://www.wired.com/archive/12.10/tail.html.</p><p>3. Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling</p><p>Less of More (New York: Hyperion, 2006, revised edition 2008).</p><p>Chapter 5</p><p>1. Eric Von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (Cambridge, MA: The MIT</p><p>Press, 2006).</p><p>2. Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating</p><p>And Profiting from Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business</p><p>Review Press, 2003).</p><p>http://www.wired.com/archive/12.10/tail.html</p><p>3. Alan Patricof, “Bring Back the Small Cap IPO,” CNN Money, September</p><p>4, 2012, http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/05/small-cap-ipo-</p><p>market/.</p><p>Chapter 6</p><p>1. http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/feb/19/makers-revolution.</p><p>Chapter 7</p><p>1. http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/01/square-worth-40-million-before-</p><p>launch/.</p><p>2. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/12/12/clustered-</p><p>systems-cools-100kw-in-single-rack/</p><p>Chapter 8</p><p>1. http://www.fastcompany.com/1645295/printable-brick-could-cut-worlds-</p><p>carbon-emissions-least-800-million-tons-year-updated.</p><p>Chapter 10</p><p>1.</p><p>http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.</p><p>html.</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>1. Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near (New York: Penguin Group,</p><p>2005).</p><p>http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/05/small-cap-ipo-market</p><p>http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/feb/19/makers-revolution</p><p>http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/01/square-worth-40-million-before-launch</p><p>http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/12/12/clustered-systems-cools-100kw-in-single-rack</p><p>http://www.fastcompany.com/1645295/printable-brick-could-cut-worlds-carbon-emissions-least-800-million-tons-year-updated</p><p>http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html</p><p>Index</p><p>Please note that index links point to page beginnings from the print edition.</p><p>Locations are approximate in e-readers, and you may need to page down</p><p>one or more times after clicking a link to get to the indexed material.</p><p>Accelerators, 58–59, 61</p><p>Access</p><p>to capital, 5, 94</p><p>to knowledge, 5</p><p>to laboratories, 161–162</p><p>to makerspaces, 179</p><p>open, 161</p><p>to tools, 5, 119–120, 172–173</p><p>Accidental entrepreneurs, 195</p><p>Adaptive Vehicle Make program, 159</p><p>Adequacy, 79</p><p>Adler, Charles, 93</p><p>Adobe, 25</p><p>Advanced manufacturing, 150, 161</p><p>Airbnb, 60–61</p><p>Air-conditioning, 137</p><p>Albin-Lax, Tina, 13–14</p><p>Alibaba, 98</p><p>Amateurs, 135–136</p><p>Anderson, Chris, 9, 55, 76, 122–123</p><p>Animal-warming device, 46–48</p><p>Apprenticeship, 79</p><p>Architecture, 163</p><p>Arduino, 66, 121–122, 196</p><p>Arena, Alexa, 62–63</p><p>Arizona State University, 171–172</p><p>Art, 93</p><p>Artisan, 77–78</p><p>Artists, 27</p><p>Authenticity, 5</p><p>Autodesk, 6, 25, 81–82, 114, 191–192</p><p>Avery Dennison, 4, 15</p><p>Back office, 42</p><p>Backyard Brains, 148, 150</p><p>Backyard science, 148</p><p>Band saw, 25</p><p>Barrel, 158</p><p>Bicycle rack, 181</p><p>Biolab, 193</p><p>Biology, 152, 193</p><p>Biomedical engineering, 149</p><p>Birth, premature, 18–19</p><p>Books, 100–101, 125</p><p>Brightworks, 188</p><p>Bruland, Laura, 100–101</p><p>Budget, 112</p><p>Bui, Anne, 91–93</p><p>Building, 28</p><p>Business. See Companies Business cards, 190</p><p>Cambridge Innovation Center, 65</p><p>Camera straps, 91–93</p><p>Capital</p><p>access to, 5, 94</p><p>microventure, 41, 43</p><p>value of, 40</p><p>venture, 45–46, 57, 94, 107–108, 133–134, 137</p><p>Cars, 88</p><p>Cartoon, 74</p><p>Ceramics, 14</p><p>Change, 2, 31</p><p>Chemistry, 72</p><p>Chen, Jane, 18–19</p><p>Chen, Perry, 93</p><p>Chesbrough, Henry, 105</p><p>Children, 188, 192</p><p>China, 84–85, 98–99</p><p>Chop saw, 25</p><p>Christianity, 12</p><p>Cities</p><p>creative, 52, 67</p><p>manufacturing in, 65</p><p>Clustered Systems, 136, 139</p><p>CNC. See Computer numerical control</p><p>CNC mill, 24, 80</p><p>cost of, 85</p><p>history of, 81</p><p>improvements in, 83</p><p>CNC waterjet cutter, 24</p><p>CNC wood router, 25, 54, 82</p><p>Coffee, 26</p><p>Collaboration, 28</p><p>College. See Universities</p><p>Color printer, 25</p><p>Combat robotics, 196</p><p>Commerce, 102</p><p>Communism, 84</p><p>Community, 5, 52</p><p>creatives in, 67</p><p>makerspace and, 18, 123–124, 203–204</p><p>open access and, 161</p><p>TechShop, 123</p><p>virtual, 123</p><p>Companies</p><p>accidental formation of, 67</p><p>Fortune 500, 16</p><p>innovation and, 167–169</p><p>interventions with, 106–107</p><p>lifestyle, 93–94</p><p>Maker Movement and, 7</p><p>packaged goods, 16</p><p>research and development in, 177</p><p>TechShop and, 183</p><p>Compressed air, 25</p><p>Computer</p><p>capabilities of, 85</p><p>design with, 25, 81</p><p>electricity and, 137</p><p>manufacturing and, 85</p><p>server, 137</p><p>Computer numerical control (CNC), 113–114</p><p>Control, 80, 82–83</p><p>Copywriting, 86</p><p>Cost</p><p>of CNC, 114</p><p>of CNC mill, 85</p><p>of failure, 37</p><p>of innovation, 37, 39, 49</p><p>of living, 38</p><p>of makerspace, 86</p><p>of prototypes, 138</p><p>TechShop and, 7</p><p>of 3D printer, 151, 156</p><p>of tools, 23, 85</p><p>Couch surfing, 22</p><p>Coughlin, Bill, 167–168</p><p>Courses</p><p>online, 73, 78, 143</p><p>at TechShop, 143</p><p>at universities, 79</p><p>Coworking spaces, 56–58</p><p>Creating, 11–12, 161–162</p><p>Creative cities, 52, 67</p><p>Creative class, 52–55</p><p>Creative clusters, 62–63, 67</p><p>Creative destruction, 49</p><p>Creatives, 67</p><p>Credit card, 133–135</p><p>Crowdfunding, 70, 93, 108–110</p><p>importance of, 95</p><p>of lifestyle business, 94</p><p>regulation of, 95</p><p>target, 125–126, 131, 142–144</p><p>Crowdsourcing, 91</p><p>Customer surprise, 125</p><p>DARPA. See Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency</p><p>Data acquisition devices, 25</p><p>DCs. See Dream Consultants</p><p>Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 158–159</p><p>Democratization, 10</p><p>Democratizing Innovation (von Hippel), 105</p><p>Department of Energy, 138</p><p>Design, 25, 81–82</p><p>Development</p><p>money for, 37</p><p>of software, 116</p><p>stage-gated, 115</p><p>Diamond manufacturing device, 33–35</p><p>Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers), 200</p><p>Digital read out (DRO), 113</p><p>Disposable money, 37, 49</p><p>Disruption, 145</p><p>DIY. See Do-it-yourself Diybio.org, 193</p><p>DODOcase, 45</p><p>Do-it-yourself (DIY), 12</p><p>Dorsey, Jack, 132–135</p><p>Dosier, Ginger, 163</p><p>Dot-com craze, 73</p><p>Dougherty, Dale, 5</p><p>Dream Consultants (DCs), 44, 119</p><p>Drill press, 25</p><p>Driptech, 176–177</p><p>DRO. See Digital read out</p><p>D.school, 173–174, 176</p><p>Duxbury, Bryan, 65–66</p><p>Dwight, Mark, 64</p><p>Economy</p><p>sharing, 59</p><p>velocity of, 164</p><p>Education, 8, 21, 202</p><p>8 Bit Lit, 66–67</p><p>Electricity, 84, 137</p><p>Electronic testing equipment, 25</p><p>Ellsworth, Adam, 65–66</p><p>Embrace baby warmer, 173–174</p><p>Embrace Global, 18–19</p><p>Engineering, 180–182, 187</p><p>approach of, 27</p><p>biomedical, 149</p><p>entertainment and, 29</p><p>English wheel and planishing hammer, 24</p><p>Entertainment, 29</p><p>Entrepreneurs, 102–104, 110. See also Incubator (entrepreneurial)</p><p>accidental, 195</p><p>TechShop and, 7</p><p>Ethan Allen, 76–78</p><p>Etsy, 99–100</p><p>Experience, 72</p><p>Explosives, 26–27, 71</p><p>Fabric, 155</p><p>Fabrication</p><p>by artisans, 78</p><p>shops, 172</p><p>Failure</p><p>cost of, 37</p><p>fast, 36, 43, 46</p><p>free, 38</p><p>innovation and, 35</p><p>research and development and, 35</p><p>Farming, 174–175</p><p>FDM. See Fused deposition modeling</p><p>Fear, 15</p><p>Fertilizer, 174–175</p><p>Fifth and Mission Project (5M Project), 57, 62–65, 132</p><p>50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) (Tulley), 188</p><p>Film projector, 72</p><p>Filo, Andy, 139–141</p><p>Firearms. See Guns</p><p>First article, 36, 39</p><p>Fitness, 185</p><p>5M Project. See Fifth and Mission Project Flexible manufacturing, 159–160</p><p>Ford Global Technology, 167–169</p><p>Fortune 500 companies, 16</p><p>Foundations, 180</p><p>Fraud, 95</p><p>Free failure, 38</p><p>Free innovation, 38, 46</p><p>Freelance, 41</p><p>French Revolution, 83</p><p>Friction-free information flow, 73–74</p><p>Fukuba, Danny, 143–144</p><p>Funding. See also Crowdfunding; Kickstarter</p><p>for art, 93</p><p>for makerspaces, 179–180</p><p>Fundrise.com, 97</p><p>Furniture, 76–77</p><p>Fused deposition modeling (FDM), 151, 153</p><p>Gage, Greg, 148–149</p><p>Game, 65–66</p><p>General Assembly, 57, 79</p><p>General Electric, 180–181</p><p>Genesis, 12</p><p>Genetics, 163</p><p>Genspace, 193</p><p>Getaround, 61</p><p>Gifts, 189, 198</p><p>Giraffe, 126–128</p><p>Giving, 1, 18</p><p>God, 12</p><p>Gordon, Sam, 144</p><p>Government laboratories, 29–30</p><p>Granite surface plate, 25</p><p>Grants, 138, 169–171</p><p>Green Beret, 5, 9</p><p>Growing, 193</p><p>Gunawan, Max, 124–126</p><p>Guns, 157–158</p><p>Hackerspaces, 197</p><p>Hands-on learning, 71, 180</p><p>Hardware</p><p>entrepreneurial incubators and, 117–118</p><p>Internet and, 123</p><p>open source, 121</p><p>start-up, 104</p><p>Heat strip bending system, 24</p><p>Hobbyist</p><p>industry value, 12</p><p>innovation and, 146</p><p>Home</p><p>office, 56</p><p>3D printing at, 153–154</p><p>Hovercraft, 27</p><p>The HUB, 57, 63–64</p><p>Hugalopes, 129</p><p>Hughes, Phil, 136–139</p><p>Hugs, 119–120</p><p>Humanity, 12</p><p>Huss, Sherry, 5</p><p>Ideas, 102</p><p>IKEA, 76–78</p><p>Incubator (entrepreneurial), 43</p><p>hardware and, 117–118</p><p>size of, 179</p><p>Incubator (medical), 19, 51, 173–174</p><p>Indiegogo, 93, 96</p><p>Industrial revolution, 83–84, 86</p><p>Industrialization, 85, 111</p><p>Information, 73–74</p><p>Infrared, 46–47</p><p>Initial public offering (IPO), 107</p><p>Injection molding system, 24, 79</p><p>Innovation</p><p>barrier, 39</p><p>commons, 179</p><p>companies and, 167–169</p><p>cost of, 37, 39, 49</p><p>diffusion of, 200</p><p>drivers of, 161</p><p>failure and, 35</p><p>free, 38, 46</p><p>hobbyists and, 146</p><p>hub, 179</p><p>makerspace, 30–31</p><p>open, 104–106</p><p>research on, 105</p><p>universities and, 169–170</p><p>Insourcing, 42–43</p><p>Instructables.com, 6, 78</p><p>Insurance, 197</p><p>Intellectual property, 176, 178</p><p>Intelligence, 87</p><p>Intelligent manufacturing, 87–89</p><p>Internet</p><p>hardware and, 123</p><p>history of, 159</p><p>sacrifice and, 75</p><p>selling and, 76</p><p>of things, 3</p><p>Intersection for the Arts, 63–64</p><p>Interventions, 106–107</p><p>Inventing, 38, 202–203</p><p>Investment, 58–59</p><p>participation and, 96</p><p>passion and, 96</p><p>perks and, 97</p><p>pride and, 97</p><p>profit and, 96</p><p>reasons for, 96</p><p>regulation of, 107–108</p><p>start-up, 102–104, 108–109</p><p>of time, 77</p><p>iPad case, 44–45</p><p>iPhone cover, 53–54</p><p>IPO. See Initial public offering</p><p>Iteration, 36, 46</p><p>Japan, 84–85</p><p>Jet pack, 139–140</p><p>Jewelry, 87, 101</p><p>JOBS Act, 95, 108</p><p>Jointer, 25</p><p>Journalism, 157–158</p><p>Journeyman, 42</p><p>Judaism, 12</p><p>Just-in-time learning, 136, 139</p><p>Kayak, 141–143</p><p>Khan Academy, 78</p><p>Kickstarter, 70, 93</p><p>funding target, 125–126, 131, 142–144</p><p>success of, 94</p><p>Kinko’s, 4–5, 160</p><p>Knowledge, 71</p><p>access to, 5</p><p>experience and, 72</p><p>sharing of, 17</p><p>Koshnick, Nick, 174–175</p><p>Kurzweil, Ray, 200</p><p>Labor, 40</p><p>Laboratories</p><p>access to, 161–162</p><p>government-run, 29–30</p><p>university, 30, 170–171</p><p>Lam, Perrin, 86–87</p><p>Lamp, 65–66, 124–126</p><p>Lang, David, 69–70</p><p>Laser cutter, 24</p><p>as gateway drug, 70</p><p>popularity of, 82</p><p>uses of, 13, 53–56</p><p>Laser sintering platform, 151</p><p>Lathe, 24–25, 112–113</p><p>Laughter, 26</p><p>Lead users, 105–106</p><p>Learning, 1, 19, 78, 145</p><p>adequacy and, 79</p><p>hands-on, 71, 180</p><p>just-in-time, 136, 139</p><p>at makerspaces, 79–80</p><p>mastery and, 79</p><p>play and, 27</p><p>project-based, 20</p><p>sharing and, 21</p><p>Lego, 72, 187</p><p>Lemnos Labs, 61–62</p><p>Leong, Bradley, 144</p><p>Libraries, 82, 172</p><p>Lifestyle business, 93–94</p><p>Lights out manufacturing, 113</p><p>Lipp, Bob, 136–139</p><p>Liquid market, 164</p><p>littleBits, 196</p><p>Living cost, 38</p><p>Local artisan, 77</p><p>Local Motors, 159</p><p>Logo, 74, 191</p><p>Long tail, 76</p><p>The Long Tail (Anderson), 55, 76, 123</p><p>Lower receiver, 157–158</p><p>Lynda.com, 78</p><p>Magazines, 185–186. See also specific magazines</p><p>Magic, 17</p><p>Magnetron, 34</p><p>Make Magazine, 5, 69–70, 186</p><p>Maker Corps, 202</p><p>Maker Faire, 6, 28–29, 187–188</p><p>Maker Movement, 3, 199</p><p>companies involved in, 7</p><p>control of machines and, 83</p><p>democratizing effects of, 10</p><p>founders of, 5</p><p>global impact of, 8</p><p>participation in, 31</p><p>policy implications of, 201</p><p>as revolutionary army, 10</p><p>trends of, 5</p><p>Maker vacation, 22, 193–194</p><p>Makerspace, 3–4, 13</p><p>access to, 179</p><p>as catalyst, 182</p><p>community and, 18, 123–124, 203–204</p><p>cost of, 86</p><p>funding for, 179–180</p><p>innovation in, 30–31</p><p>learning at, 79–80</p><p>magic of, 17</p><p>size of, 178–179</p><p>tools in, 24–26</p><p>Making, 1, 11, 190–191</p><p>of gifts, 189</p><p>physical, 12</p><p>starting, 195</p><p>virtual, 12</p><p>Manufacturing, 4</p><p>advanced, 150, 161</p><p>in cities, 65</p><p>computers and, 85</p><p>of diamonds, 33–35</p><p>education and, 21</p><p>flexible, 159–160</p><p>intelligent, 87–89</p><p>Kinko’s and, 160</p><p>lights out, 113</p><p>molecular, 162</p><p>offshore, 98–99</p><p>on demand, 150</p><p>3D printing and, 154–156</p><p>trends in, 21</p><p>Mario games, 65</p><p>Market</p><p>liquid, 164</p><p>niche, 55</p><p>Martha Stewart Living, 14</p><p>Marx, Karl, 40, 84, 119</p><p>Mastery, 79</p><p>Materials, 71, 155, 157</p><p>Mathematics, 180–182, 187</p><p>McKelvey, Jim, 132–135</p><p>Meaning, 77</p><p>Mechanization, 111</p><p>Medical devices, 46–48</p><p>Meeting rooms, 25</p><p>Metal grinders and sanders, 24</p><p>Microventure capital, 41, 43</p><p>Microwave, 34</p><p>MIG welder, 24</p><p>Mike (diamond manufacturing device inventor), 33–35</p><p>Milling machine, 24, 112–113</p><p>Mini Maker Faire, 187</p><p>Molecular manufacturing, 162</p><p>Money, 37, 49</p><p>Montoya, Mitzi, 171</p><p>Moore’s law, 85</p><p>Moving, 194–195</p><p>Murty, Naganand, 18–19, 51–52</p><p>Music industry, 47</p><p>Musk, Elon, 136</p><p>National Instruments,</p><p>25</p><p>Needle gauge, 55</p><p>Neurons, 148</p><p>New York Toy Fair, 131</p><p>Newton, Jim, 6–8, 132, 148, 196–197</p><p>Niche markets, 55</p><p>Obsolescence, 156</p><p>Office</p><p>back, 42</p><p>home, 56</p><p>paperless, 154</p><p>shared, 56</p><p>technology transfer, 169–170</p><p>Offshore manufacturing, 98–99</p><p>On demand manufacturing, 150</p><p>One World Futbol Project, 48</p><p>Online courses, 73, 78, 143</p><p>Online shopping, 73</p><p>Open access, 161</p><p>Open innovation, 104–106</p><p>Open Innovation (Chesbrough), 105</p><p>Open source hardware, 121</p><p>OpenROV, 70</p><p>OpenXC, 168–169</p><p>O’Reilly, Tim, 5</p><p>Origami, 141</p><p>Oru Kayak, 141</p><p>Outsourcing, 41–42</p><p>Overlock sewing machine, 24</p><p>Packaged goods companies, 16</p><p>Panel saw, 25</p><p>Paperless office, 154</p><p>Participation, 2, 28, 186, 199</p><p>investment and, 96</p><p>in Maker Movement, 31</p><p>Parts, 88–89</p><p>Passion, 96</p><p>Patent, 131</p><p>Patrick (DODOcase inventor), 43–45</p><p>Pencil, 75</p><p>Perks, 97</p><p>Personal industrial revolution, 83, 86</p><p>Philosophy, 12</p><p>Photographers, 92</p><p>Physical goods, 21</p><p>Physical making, 12</p><p>Physics, 72</p><p>Planer, 25</p><p>Plasma cutter, 24, 190–191</p><p>Plastic, 153–155</p><p>Play, 2, 26</p><p>building as, 28</p><p>learning and, 27</p><p>Plug and Play Tech Center, 58</p><p>Plyboo, 54</p><p>Policy, 201</p><p>Popcorn, 26</p><p>Popular Mechanics, 6, 186</p><p>Mr. Potato Head, 130–131</p><p>Powder coating system, 24</p><p>Practice, 80</p><p>Premature birth, 18–19</p><p>Pricing, 73</p><p>Pride, 97</p><p>Private studios, 25</p><p>Pro-am, 135</p><p>Problems, 10</p><p>Product managers, 15–16</p><p>Production</p><p>means of, 84</p><p>prototype, 40</p><p>Professionals, 135–136</p><p>Profit, 96</p><p>Programmable matter, 162–163</p><p>Programmers, 42</p><p>Project-based learning, 20</p><p>Proteins, 105</p><p>Prototank, 65</p><p>Prototype, 36</p><p>cost of, 138</p><p>generations of, 134</p><p>importance of, 138</p><p>production, 40</p><p>tarp clip, 39</p><p>tools and, 112–113</p><p>Public, 17</p><p>Quality, 5</p><p>Quilting machine, 24</p><p>Radicalization, 189</p><p>Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), 122</p><p>Real estate, 97–98</p><p>Real world, 123</p><p>Regulation</p><p>of crowdfunding, 95</p><p>of investment, 107–108</p><p>Religion, 12</p><p>Relocation, 194–195</p><p>Remodeling, 12–13</p><p>Remotely operated vehicle (ROV), 70</p><p>Replacement parts, 88–89</p><p>Research</p><p>on innovation, 105</p><p>universities and, 170</p><p>Research and development</p><p>in companies, 177</p><p>failure and, 35</p><p>institution-directed, 30</p><p>self-directed, 30</p><p>Resourcing, 43</p><p>Retail store, 26</p><p>Revolution. See also Industrial revolution</p><p>French, 83</p><p>industrial, 83–84, 86</p><p>Maker Movement as, 10</p><p>personal industrial, 83, 86</p><p>RFID. See Radio Frequency Identification</p><p>Ringelmann, Danae, 96</p><p>Risk aversion, 35</p><p>Robotics, 113–114, 143</p><p>combat, 196</p><p>video conferencing, 126–128</p><p>Rogers, Everett, 200</p><p>ROV. See Remotely operated vehicle</p><p>SaaS. See Software as a service</p><p>Sacrifice, 75</p><p>San Francisco, 62–64</p><p>Sandberg, Dan, 126–128</p><p>Sandberg, Roy, 126–128</p><p>Sandblast cabinet, 24</p><p>Sanders, 24–25</p><p>Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 107–108</p><p>Satisfaction, 15, 17</p><p>Saws, 25</p><p>School</p><p>film projector at, 72</p><p>shop classes in, 21</p><p>tool access and, 172</p><p>Schumpeter, Joseph, 49</p><p>Science, 148, 180–182, 187</p><p>Scroll saw, 25</p><p>Segway, 143</p><p>Self-assembly programmable matter, 162–163</p><p>Selling, 76</p><p>Sensors, 88</p><p>Servers, 137</p><p>Sewing machine, 24</p><p>SFMade, 64–65</p><p>Shared office, 56</p><p>Sharing, 1, 14</p><p>economy, 59</p><p>fear of, 15</p><p>of knowledge, 17</p><p>learning and, 21</p><p>magic from, 17</p><p>in public, 17</p><p>satisfaction from, 15, 17</p><p>showing and, 17</p><p>tangibility and, 17</p><p>Sheet metal brake, 24</p><p>Sheet metal corner notcher, 24</p><p>Sheet metal punch, 24</p><p>Sheet metal roller, 24</p><p>Sheet metal shear, 24</p><p>Shop classes, 21</p><p>ShopBot. See CNC wood router</p><p>Shopping, 73</p><p>Showing, 17</p><p>Silicon Valley, 165</p><p>Simulation, 81–82</p><p>Singularity, 200</p><p>Skills. See Knowledge</p><p>SLA. See Stereolithography</p><p>Smart sensors, 88</p><p>Smartphone, 133, 144</p><p>Soccer, 48</p><p>Sodium, 72</p><p>Sofis, Kate, 64</p><p>Software, 25, 114, 191–192</p><p>control and, 82</p><p>development of, 116</p><p>start-ups, 59–60, 104, 116–117</p><p>Software as a service (SaaS), 41</p><p>Soldering equipment, 25</p><p>Solitude, 28</p><p>Solum, 174–175</p><p>Spare time, 38, 53</p><p>SparkFun, 196</p><p>Special Forces, 5, 71</p><p>Spectators, 185–186</p><p>Spot welder, 24</p><p>Square, 132, 134</p><p>Stage-gated development, 115</p><p>Stakepole, Eric, 70</p><p>Stanford University, 173–174, 176</p><p>Start-up, 165</p><p>accelerators, 58</p><p>budget of, 112</p><p>hardware, 104</p><p>investment in, 102–104, 108–109</p><p>JOBS Act and, 108</p><p>software, 59–60, 104, 116–117</p><p>Startup Weekend, 102–104</p><p>Steam engine, 84</p><p>Steel, 157</p><p>Steinrueck, Christopher, 99–100</p><p>Stereolithography (SLA), 150</p><p>Sting (musician), 47–48</p><p>Storage areas, 25</p><p>Strickler, Yancey, 93</p><p>Studios, private, 25</p><p>Styles, Karen, 55–56</p><p>Success</p><p>of Kickstarter, 94</p><p>rules of, 145</p><p>Super Mario games, 65</p><p>Supply chain, 118</p><p>Support, 2, 29</p><p>Tangibility, 12, 17</p><p>Tarp clip, 39–40</p><p>Teaching, 21</p><p>Technology, 180–182, 187, 200–201</p><p>Technology transfer offices, 169–170</p><p>TechShop, 3–4</p><p>community, 123</p><p>companies and, 183</p><p>cost savings with, 7</p><p>courses at, 143</p><p>education and, 8</p><p>entrepreneurs and, 7</p><p>founding of, 6</p><p>partnership with, 167–168, 171–172</p><p>popular machines at, 82</p><p>in San Francisco, 64</p><p>tours of, 119</p><p>TechTown, 65</p><p>Telecommuting, 56</p><p>3D printer, 24, 39, 147</p><p>biological structures and, 152</p><p>children and, 192</p><p>cost of, 151, 156</p><p>fabric and, 155</p><p>guns and, 157–158</p><p>history of, 150</p><p>at home, 153–154</p><p>manufacturing and, 154–156</p><p>popularity of, 82</p><p>purpose of, 156</p><p>types of, 150–152</p><p>3D scanner, 24</p><p>Ties, 99–100</p><p>TIG welder, 24</p><p>Tigan, Jazz, 129–132</p><p>Time</p><p>investment of, 77</p><p>learning and, 136, 139</p><p>spare, 38, 53</p><p>Tools, 2, 23, 111–112</p><p>access to, 5, 119–120, 172–173</p><p>cost of, 23, 85</p><p>in makerspace, 24–26</p><p>ownership of, 84</p><p>power of, 5</p><p>prototypes and, 112–113</p><p>schools and universities and, 172–173</p><p>Transparency, 73</p><p>Trebuchet, 27</p><p>Trends, 200–201</p><p>of Maker Movement, 5</p><p>in manufacturing, 21</p><p>in physical goods, 21</p><p>Tulley, Gever, 188</p><p>Typesetting, 15–16</p><p>Uber, 60</p><p>Unions, 119</p><p>United States, 201–202</p><p>Universities, 144</p><p>courses at, 79</p><p>domains in, 170</p><p>education and, 21</p><p>grants and, 169–171</p><p>innovation and, 169–170</p><p>intellectual property and, 176</p><p>laboratories at, 30, 170–171</p><p>research and, 170</p><p>tool access and, 172–173</p><p>Upper receiver, 157</p><p>Vacation, maker, 22, 193–194</p><p>Vacuum forming system, 24</p><p>Valentine’s gift, 198</p><p>Value</p><p>of capital, 40</p><p>of DIY industry, 12</p><p>of hobbyist industry, 12</p><p>of labor, 40</p><p>Velocity, 164</p><p>Venture capital, 45–46, 57, 94, 107–108, 133–134, 137</p><p>Video conferencing robot, 126–128</p><p>Vinyl cutter, 24</p><p>Virtual community, 123</p><p>Virtual making, 12</p><p>Virtual world, 3</p><p>von Hippel, Eric, 105</p><p>Watches, 118</p><p>Welding, 24, 80, 181</p><p>Wi-Fi, 26</p><p>Willis, Anton, 141–143</p><p>Wired Magazine, 9, 55, 76</p><p>Wong, Ben, 91–93</p><p>Wong, Ivan, 91</p><p>Wood Thumb, 99</p><p>Wooden ties, 99–100</p><p>Woods, Dan, 5</p><p>Woodworking, 77</p><p>Work</p><p>in collaboration, 28</p><p>in solitude, 28</p><p>tables, 25</p><p>Workspace, 3–4</p><p>World</p><p>peace, 48</p><p>problems, 10</p><p>real, 123</p><p>virtual, 3</p><p>Y-Combinator, 58–59</p><p>Yes & Yes Designs, 100</p><p>Youngblood, Paul, 118</p><p>Zero to Maker (Lang), 70</p><p>About the Author</p><p>Mark Hatch, CEO and cofounder of TechShop, is a former Green Beret and</p><p>has held executive positions focused on innovation, disruptive technology,</p><p>and entrepreneurship at large and small firms alike. At Avery Dennison he</p><p>launched Avery.com and then helped to drive global technology business</p><p>development; at Kinko’s, he launched the eCommerce portion of</p><p>Kinkos.com and ran the computer services section inside Kinko’s stores</p><p>across the United States; and as the COO of Health Net’s health benefits</p><p>ASP, Mark helped to launch one of the early integrated health benefits</p><p>portals.</p><p>A recognized leader in the global maker movement and a sought-after</p><p>speaker and consultant on innovation, advanced manufacturing and</p><p>leadership, Mark has spoken to groups from GE, Ford, P&G, ExxonMobile,</p><p>Kraft, and other Fortune 500 firms. He has presented at universities like UC</p><p>Berkeley and Harvard, as well as events such as TEDx, The Clinton Global</p><p>Initiative, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Singularity U.</p><p>Mark has appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Bloomberg, CNN, and</p><p>Fox, among others. He has been quoted in publications, including</p><p>Bloomberg Business, FastCompany, Inc, Forbes, The New York Times, The</p><p>Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and he</p><p>has published a number of articles, including an opinion piece for the</p><p>Washington Post.</p><p>Recently, The San Francisco Business Times presented Mark with a</p><p>“Bay Area’s Most Admired CEO Award.” Fast Company has recognized</p><p>him in its “Who’s Next” column, and TechShop received the EXPY Award,</p><p>given to the “experience stager of the year.”</p><p>TechShop, a do-it-yourself workshop and fabrication studio with six</p><p>locations open and hundreds more planned over the next decade, is the</p><p>largest public access tools and computer enabled manufacturing platform in</p><p>the world. Through TechShop, Mark is focused on radically democratizing</p><p>access to the tools of innovation by providing the lowest cost access to tools</p><p>the world has ever seen. With partners like Autodesk, Ford, GE, and</p><p>Lowe’s, along with governmental agencies like DARPA (for advanced</p><p>manufacturing) and the Veterans Administration (for veteran training),</p><p>TechShop is poised to help reshape how the world does innovation and</p><p>manufacturing and has already begun to have a significant impact on the</p><p>economic development opportunities in the communities where it is built.</p><p>Mark holds an M.B.A. from the Drucker Center at the Claremont</p><p>Graduate University and a B.A. in Economics from the University of</p><p>California at Irvine.</p><p>Cover</p><p>THE MAKER MOVEMENT MANIFESTO: RULES FOR INNOVATION IN THE NEW WORLD OF CRAFTERS, HACKERS, AND TINKERERS</p><p>Copyright Page</p><p>Contents</p><p>Acknowledgments</p><p>Maker Movement Manifesto (Short Version)</p><p>Introduction</p><p>1. Maker Movement Manifesto</p><p>2. Free Innovation!</p><p>3. Communities of Practice</p><p>4. Knowledge, Learning, Control, and Intelligence</p><p>5. Fueling Innovation</p><p>6. Democratization of Tools and Information</p><p>7. Rise of the Pro-Am</p><p>8. Distributed and Flexible Manufacturing</p><p>9. Accelerating Innovation</p><p>10. Changing through Participation</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>Notes</p><p>Index</p><p>us for our attempts. “I’m not good at making anything,” need</p><p>never be said again. We were born to make. It may take some practice to get</p><p>good at some kinds of making, but technology has begun to make creating</p><p>easy enough that everyone can make.</p><p>My favorite question to ask at any makerspace is, “What are you</p><p>making?”</p><p>People open up like flowers when asked that question and given any</p><p>kind of positive encouragement. In this regard, we are all still five years</p><p>old.</p><p>Interestingly, after six years of working in a creative space, I’ve been</p><p>told, “I can’t tell you everything, but . . .” probably hundreds of times,</p><p>maybe thousands of times, but I’ve never been told, “I can’t tell you.”</p><p>Why? We want others to see what we have done.</p><p>When I worked at Avery Dennison, we used to let the newest junior</p><p>product managers help work on the back panels of our product’s packaging.</p><p>They had to work off templates that had been approved and developed for</p><p>the line, and they had to have all the appropriate approvals; nonetheless, the</p><p>back panel was “theirs.” The young managers would jump into this with</p><p>gusto, argue over font choices, the kerning of apostrophes, the shade of</p><p>loam green. I repeat, they cared about the kerning of an apostrophe—the</p><p>space between a letter and an apostrophe. Look at the space they had to</p><p>work with here:’s. Can you see it? On a high-resolution computer screen,</p><p>this is about the distance of two or three pixels, and they removed one! Yet,</p><p>they would protect their design turf like a pit bull protects its bowl of food,</p><p>growling when someone tried to mess with their back panel.</p><p>Let me put this into context. To be a junior product manager at any</p><p>Fortune 500 packaged goods company, you have to graduate from a</p><p>respected MBA program at the top of your class. You have to work between</p><p>your bachelor’s degree and your MBA at another major company with</p><p>consumer facing interactions. You are among some of the “best and</p><p>brightest” our schools and companies produce. You will almost always</p><p>make senior director, VP, SVP, or CEO if you choose, or you will go out</p><p>and start your own company. If you are a junior product manager at this</p><p>level, you are a very intelligent, type A, hard-charging, competitive</p><p>professional.</p><p>That said, once the aforementioned products were launched into the</p><p>channel and we all went to an Office Depot or Staples to see what the final</p><p>product packaging and shelf positioning looked like in the stores, the junior</p><p>product managers would rush like little kids to the stacks of “their”</p><p>products. They would stand in front of them, momentarily admiring the way</p><p>the products looked on the shelf and then pull a package off the shelf, turn it</p><p>over, and examine their handiwork. A sense of satisfaction visibly rolled</p><p>over them as they saw that the typesetters had taken their ideas into final</p><p>production and the s was just a little closer to the apostrophe because it had</p><p>been manually kerned. Invariably, these talented, impressive, type A young</p><p>professionals would turn and say something like, “I did this.”</p><p>“I did this.”</p><p>“See the space between the apostrophe and that s? I did that.”</p><p>The glow on their faces was like a new mother’s when holding her</p><p>child for the first time. Complete satisfaction. The need to show others</p><p>one’s new, beautiful child is embedded in the human psyche.</p><p>What is going on here? First, while the contributions that these</p><p>professionals were excited about might seem insignificant—after all, the</p><p>difference, distance-wise, between the spacing of an apostrophe that has</p><p>been automatically kerned and one that has been manually kerned is</p><p>negligible—but the end product is something that can be bought, taken</p><p>home, and shown to a significant other. Second, it is public. Hundreds of</p><p>thousands of these packages are shipped all over the world. Third, it is often</p><p>the first tangible and public representation of years, if not a decade, of</p><p>work. It isn’t the size of the impact that is significant; it is that there was</p><p>impact and it was made tangible, and tens of thousands of people would</p><p>“see” their work. That really is powerfully satisfying, even if it is only the</p><p>amount of nothing between an apostrophe and an s.</p><p>If you make something and don’t share it, was it made? If you make</p><p>something, even something as small as a one-pixel space modification on</p><p>the back of a package, and share it, you have made something, and it must</p><p>be shared.</p><p>Another aspect of sharing is sharing knowledge and knowhow. The best</p><p>attribute of a well-run makerspace is the sharing of skills and knowledge. It</p><p>starts with the formal instruction, but the best learning takes place while one</p><p>person is building or designing and someone else with just a little (or</p><p>sometimes a ton) more experience lends a helping hand and the project gets</p><p>upgraded in the process. The sharing philosophy gives a makerspace its</p><p>magic. People show off their creations knowing criticism was left at the</p><p>front door, and everyone feels comfortable asking for help, guidance, and</p><p>input into projects as they go through the build process. Sharing makes a</p><p>maker-space a community.</p><p>GIVE</p><p>There are few things more selfless and satisfying</p><p>than giving away something you have made. The act</p><p>of making puts a small piece of you into the object.</p><p>Giving it to someone else is like giving that person a</p><p>small piece of yourself. Such things are often</p><p>the most cherished items we possess.</p><p>One of the most satisfying aspects of making is giving away what you</p><p>have made. Wonderfully, most people still value gifts made by the giver</p><p>more than gifts that were bought off the shelf. If you do nothing else this</p><p>year, make one Christmas present to give away. And reflect on the level of</p><p>satisfaction you get and the recipient receives in that act. It is</p><p>immeasurable.</p><p>If your parents are still alive, they probably are still hanging onto craft</p><p>projects you made for them when you were a child. Quilts are often handed</p><p>down for generations. A well-made item, meeting a real need, made by and</p><p>for a loved one, is among the greatest of gifts.</p><p>There is another type of giving, that of your creativity or intellectual</p><p>property. Embrace Global is a wonderful nonprofit that used TechShop for</p><p>some of its development work. Naganand Murty was one of the design</p><p>engineers who came to our space, under Embrace cofounder and CEO Jane</p><p>Chen’s direction, to address the problem of infant thermoregulation in</p><p>developing countries. Babies who are born even a few weeks prematurely</p><p>are unable to thermo-regulate, or maintain their body temperatures on their</p><p>own, and consequently must be incubated within one hour of birth or risk</p><p>death or serious permanent disabilities. For the hundreds of thousands of</p><p>these babies who are born around the world every year without quick access</p><p>to incubators (because they are born in rural areas where the nearest</p><p>hospital with incubator equipment may be several hours, if not days, away),</p><p>the problem is especially critical.</p><p>The question that Naganand Murty and his team had (you’ll meet</p><p>cofounder Jane Chen in Chapter 3) was fairly simple: Would it be possible</p><p>to design a simple, affordable “blanket” that could maintain a baby’s body</p><p>temperature at a constant level for an extended period of time? And that</p><p>was not dependent upon a continuous supply of electricity? Well, it turned</p><p>out the answer was yes. The Embrace portable infant warmer, which looks</p><p>like a mini sleeping bag and costs a fraction of the price of other baby</p><p>warming devices, uses some fancy chemistry and design to make it work.</p><p>But here is the most amazing thing. Portions of Embrace’s core</p><p>technology were donated to the organization through interactions with other</p><p>members of the TechShop community. These community members gave</p><p>their ideas away freely. And as a result, General Electric has signed on to</p><p>help distribute the blanket, and Embrace is on track to save the lives of</p><p>100,000 babies in the next five years. Jane has been recognized by the</p><p>World Economic Council as one of the top social entrepreneurs in the</p><p>world.</p><p>LEARN</p><p>You must learn to make. You must always seek to learn</p><p>more about your making. You may become a journeyman</p><p>or master artisan, but you will still learn, want to learn,</p><p>and push yourself to learn new techniques, materials,</p><p>and processes. Building a lifelong learning path</p><p>ensures a rich and rewarding making life and,</p><p>importantly, enables one to share.</p><p>Making brings about a natural interest in learning. It brings out the</p><p>natural four-year-old in all of us. “Why is the sky blue?” “Where does milk</p><p>come from?” “How are babies made?” This natural inquisitiveness seems to</p><p>be beaten out of most people in school or at home. I’ll let the educators in</p><p>this community help figure out why “project”-based learning seems to fit</p><p>some learning styles better than others, but it certainly feels more natural. I</p><p>always found the order we did things in physics class backward. Instead of</p><p>being taught the formula for determining the ratio of the required output</p><p>force to the input force and then trekking to the lab to see how a lever</p><p>works, it makes more sense to first observe the lever in action and then</p><p>learn the formula for it. This is how the principle was figured out in the first</p><p>place, through observation. You observe an effect, then build a theory to fit</p><p>the observation. It may be faster to memorize facts than to experience them,</p><p>but then I would argue you don’t really own that fact. “Hot” is a pretty</p><p>abstract concept until you’ve burned yourself.</p><p>The world is such a fascinating place. How do you design and build a</p><p>table? What kind of joints can be used to join the legs to the table? Which</p><p>are the best ones for what I’m trying? What periods in history used different</p><p>technics? What glues should I use, and when do I use a screw or a nail, or a</p><p>brad, or a staple, or a rivet? What woods have which characteristics? What</p><p>style do I want? What tools should I use? The options go on and on. They</p><p>don’t have to; you can jump in and just do it. Or you can plan and plan and</p><p>plan. The key takeaway, though, is that you are going to learn something.</p><p>And no one can take it from you.</p><p>Learning is fundamental to making. The more time you spend</p><p>familiarizing yourself with and practicing in a field, the better you will get</p><p>in it. Very quickly, you will be able to share what you have learned with</p><p>someone else who is newer to it than you are. There is a different kind of</p><p>satisfaction that comes from teaching, but it is very real. Watching people</p><p>you have been teaching become facile and expert in what you have taught</p><p>them is extremely satisfying.</p><p>Learning is fundamental; it is why we have books, libraries, schools,</p><p>the food channel, the DIY channel, and shows like How It’s Made. These</p><p>days, the DIY magazine rack at a local newsstand often constitutes 15 to 20</p><p>percent of the total space.</p><p>From an educational perspective, we live in a sad time for making.</p><p>When I was growing up, woodshop and metal shop were required courses</p><p>for middle schoolers. Every middle school I was aware of had a woodshop</p><p>instructor. I still have the things I made in middle school woodshop, and</p><p>many of you do too. Today, it can be hard to find a shop in an entire school</p><p>district. This makes no sense at all. In our “race to the top,” school systems</p><p>tend to focus only on the students who are headed to college, ignoring the</p><p>50 percent of those who aren’t, depriving all students of skills that they</p><p>could use the rest of their lives.</p><p>Just as badly, right as we are on the cusp of the largest explosion of new</p><p>products and development of physical goods through breakthroughs in</p><p>materials science, 3D printing, bioengineering, nanotechnology, design, and</p><p>engineering, American institutions are failing to graduate enough engineers,</p><p>scientists, and production workers. Economically, this is insane. It is time to</p><p>reengineer our schools and reintroduce shop class. Oh, and by the way,</p><p>through cheap and powerful design computers and 3D printers, we can</p><p>make these courses exciting, engaging, and transformative.</p><p>With access to the right kind of tools, you can experience your own</p><p>industrial revolution in a matter of weeks. It’s possible. It really happens.</p><p>Let me give you an example. A couple of years ago, some of our</p><p>TechShop staff members encouraged me to meet one of our newer</p><p>members. He was the first I’d met who was taking an extended “maker</p><p>vacation.” This member had saved up his money for a couple of years</p><p>working odd jobs as a security guard and janitor, and once he had accrued</p><p>enough money, he quit his job and took the first vacation he had taken in</p><p>years.</p><p>This man was committed. He had the bug. He wanted to learn how to</p><p>make things. He was good with the hand tools, but he had never taken</p><p>welding, machine shop, woodworking, textiles, 3D printing, computer-</p><p>aided design, or any number of other classes.</p><p>To stretch his funds, he didn’t stay at a hotel or rent an apartment.</p><p>Instead, he used couchsurfing.org to find free places to stay every night. A</p><p>few times, he couldn’t find a couch, so he just slept in his car. Couch</p><p>surfing turned out to be a great tool for him to help us find new members.</p><p>He was so focused and excited that he would go “home” at night and tell his</p><p>new couch surfing host all about what he was doing at the shop. We picked</p><p>up half a dozen or so new members that month. We actually kicked around</p><p>the idea of turning him into a sales representative by having him couch surf</p><p>through the Bay Area for a couple of months.</p><p>But even better, he became a maker that month. He took every class he</p><p>could schedule and went from hand tools to power tools to computer-</p><p>controlled advanced manufacturing tools. He could weld, lay out carbon</p><p>fiber, CNC mill, lathe a bowl, and spin a lighting fixture. He even picked up</p><p>a little electronics in that 30 days. His desire to learn was so powerful that</p><p>he quit his job, stayed at strangers’ houses, and created other new makers in</p><p>his enthusiasm. What is holding you back?</p><p>TOOL UP</p><p>You must have access to the right tools for the project at</p><p>hand. Invest in and develop local access to the tools you</p><p>need to do the making you want to do. The tools of making</p><p>have never been cheaper, easier to use, or more powerful.</p><p>I had to use a phrasal verb as a heading to this section so it would be</p><p>consistent with all the other one-word headings in the manifesto. I like</p><p>manifestos heavy with verbs.</p><p>You and I are living through the most amazing age in all of human</p><p>history. Whenever someone asks me which time period I would like to be</p><p>living in, I always say “right now.” Tools are getting easier to use, they are</p><p>more powerful, and they are cheaper to acquire than at any other time in</p><p>history. Materials are becoming more accessible, more sophisticated, and</p><p>more fun to work on and with.</p><p>Odds are, you cannot possibly afford all the tools you may want or</p><p>need. So join a makerspace. What I have learned is that a community of</p><p>makers does not fully emerge until a complete makerspace is provided. The</p><p>advantage of a well-equipped makerspace is that it attracts people with a</p><p>widely diverse selection of projects, creating a beehive of activity, passion,</p><p>knowledge, and sharing. When a large and diverse set of tools is provided, a</p><p>large and diverse group of makers comes out to live, work, and play. The</p><p>following is a general list of what a well-equipped makerspace needs in</p><p>order to meet the needs of a community. There may be a few more or</p><p>different tools on your list, but this is a good start:</p><p>• Laser cutters</p><p>• CNC milling machine(s)</p><p>• Manual milling machine(s) with digital readouts</p><p>• Manual lathe(s) with digital readouts</p><p>• 3D printer(s), consumer and commercial grade</p><p>• 3D scanner</p><p>• CNC (computer numerical control) waterjet cutter (4 × 8 foot)</p><p>• Vacuum forming system</p><p>• Heat strip bending system</p><p>• Injection molding system</p><p>• Commercial grade sewing machines</p><p>• Overlock sewing machine (also known as a serger)</p><p>• Quilting machine (preferably CNC)</p><p>• Computer-controlled vinyl cutter</p><p>• Powder coating system (and large oven)</p><p>• MIG (metal inert gas) welders</p><p>• TIG (tungsten inert gas) welders</p><p>• Handheld plasma cutter</p><p>• Sheet metal spot welder</p><p>• Sheet metal brake (16 gauge × 50 inch)</p><p>• Rotary sheet metal punch</p><p>• Sheet metal corner notcher</p><p>• English wheel and planishing hammer</p><p>• Sheet metal shear (6 gauge × 50 inch)</p><p>• Sheet metal roller (16 gauge × 50 inch)</p><p>• Sandblast cabinet</p><p>• Metal grinders and sanders</p><p>• Metal chop saw</p><p>• Metal horizontal band saw</p><p>• Metal vertical band saw</p><p>• Electronic testing and soldering equipment</p><p>• Large format color printer</p><p>• ShopBot CNC wood router saw (4 × 8 foot)</p><p>• Panel saw</p><p>• Wood planer</p><p>• Wood jointer</p><p>• Wood band saw</p><p>• Wood sanders</p><p>• Wood scroll saws</p><p>• Wood lathe</p><p>• Drill presses</p><p>• Granite surface plate with digital height gauges</p><p>• Compressed air throughout shop</p><p>• Compressed air hand tools</p><p>• 30 or more design computers</p><p>• 30 or more copies of or licenses for Autodesk Inventor, Maya, 3D</p><p>Max, 123D Make, AutoCAD software</p><p>• 30 or more copies of or licenses for Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop,</p><p>Acrobat</p><p>• 30 or more copies of or licenses for National Instruments LabVIEW</p><p>Professional development system</p><p>• 8 or more National Instruments multifunction data acquisition</p><p>devices</p><p>• Member storage</p><p>• Private studios for rent</p><p>• Meeting rooms and/or classrooms</p><p>• 12 large work tables</p><p>• Wi-Fi</p><p>• Retail store</p><p>• Free coffee and popcorn</p><p>And, of course, the local makerspace must then have staff to teach</p><p>classes and manage this great space.</p><p>I’m not going to apologize for the size, breadth, or depth of this list.</p><p>This is, in fact, what is required to foment a maker revolution. Without the</p><p>tools and community it is impossible to maintain a movement. Revolutions</p><p>are fought and won with arms. These tools are our “arms.” Without access</p><p>to them, nothing has changed. They may be easy, cheap, and powerful, but</p><p>they are useless if you can’t use them.</p><p>PLAY</p><p>Be playful with what you are making, and you will be</p><p>surprised, excited, and proud of what you discover.</p><p>The most productive environments I have operated in are often the ones</p><p>where there is a lot of laughter. We joke about the craziest things. We are</p><p>playful with the ideas, stretch them to extremes, and morph them</p><p>ridiculously. Even in the military with the Special Forces unit I was a part</p><p>of, we were constantly exploring ideas, trying new ways of working, and</p><p>even goofing around.</p><p>One day we learned that the quickest way to cut down a tree was with a</p><p>detonation cord (det-cord) and plastic explosive. The number of wraps and</p><p>the amount of plastic varied depending on the size of the tree we were</p><p>trying to “cut down.” The det-cord cut the tree, and the plastic would kick it</p><p>out in the direction we needed it to fall. If just the det-cord was used, the</p><p>tree might randomly fall on a nearby object by accident. This became a</p><p>feature once we figured out how to control the direction of the fall. By</p><p>using the plastic as well, we could drop the tree on something on purpose.</p><p>That was a great day, or, it was until we started a small fire. Live and learn.</p><p>No, actually, play and learn.</p><p>We have artists and engineers (among many other categories of users)</p><p>in our space. What is interesting is that the engineers typically come to a</p><p>machine with a set of things they are trying to accomplish. The artists, often</p><p>enough, come to a machine to experiment and see what it can do. (They</p><p>also tend to break the machines a little more often, and not because they</p><p>don’t know how to operate them; they are just pushing the equipment to do</p><p>something beyond its normal operating environment.) When the two are</p><p>combined, watch out. Have you ever heard a CNC milling machine play a</p><p>tune?</p><p>Blocks, LEGO, and Erector sets are what I grew up with. Kids now</p><p>have LEGO Mindstorms, radio-controlled robots, and Arduino</p><p>microcontrollers. Soon, the home 3D printer will be the PC accessory of</p><p>choice. Playing with these toys is a lot of fun and will help to raise up</p><p>another generation of makers.</p><p>Recently, I received a note that one of my sons had updated his</p><p>Facebook page with a video titled “Hovercraft.” I was on the road and had</p><p>no idea what this referred to, so I clicked through to YouTube and watched</p><p>him floating around our garage on a homemade hovercraft. He had found</p><p>instructions on the Internet, gone to the hardware store and bought the</p><p>pieces he needed, and in an afternoon he had built a poor man’s hovercraft</p><p>using an electric leaf blower as the drive. He now has a hovercraft, and I’ve</p><p>got a leaf blower. He was playing around, but he learned how to use a</p><p>couple of saws he had never used before. I built a trebuchet with my other</p><p>son and had a blast getting the cats to chase flying paper balls around the</p><p>house.</p><p>Building is a form of play. There are times I have a hard time</p><p>distinguishing the difference between work and play. I hope you will have</p><p>the same experience in your work life.</p><p>PARTICIPATE</p><p>Join the Maker Movement and reach out to those around</p><p>you who are discovering the joy of making. Hold seminars,</p><p>parties, events, maker days, fairs, expos, classes, or dinners</p><p>with and for the other makers in your community.</p><p>We are not islands. Though there is a time to work in solitude, to focus, to</p><p>push oneself without distractions, there is also a time, and I daresay most of</p><p>the time, where it would be better to be working together, or at least sharing</p><p>a creative space. The warmth of another human in the room or workspace is</p><p>preferable to working in solitude. Many artists, engineers, and inventors</p><p>work alone in their labs and studios, but just as many or more collaborate.</p><p>Even if they don’t collaborate directly, they will seek out the comfort of a</p><p>peer group to hang out with. Writers form writing clubs, others form co-ops</p><p>to share tools or workspace. Many go into business with friends or</p><p>collaborators, not just because they need to, but because they want to. We</p><p>are social creatures. It is great to be able to build up your shop in the garage</p><p>or barn, but it is sad to work in it alone day in and day out. It is more fun to</p><p>work together.</p><p>Participation takes many forms: working directly together; attending</p><p>events; and participating in societies, clubs, and parties with others who</p><p>care about the work we do and share. One such event, designed specifically</p><p>for makers by the editors of Make magazine, is the Maker Faire. Held in</p><p>various locations around the world, Maker Faires are annual events where</p><p>thousands of makers come and hang out together to look at, participate in,</p><p>and experience a wide range of fun projects that makers are working on in</p><p>the area. The primary Faire is held in Northern California and attracts over</p><p>100,000 attendees over the course of a weekend. Smaller, local versions,</p><p>called Mini Maker Faires, draw up to a thousand people to see a hundred or</p><p>so projects, booths, and exhibitions.</p><p>The sense of wonder and amazement on the faces of the kids (both</p><p>young and old) at these events makes all the effort and expense that go into</p><p>the Faires well worth it. Watching the performance group, ArcAttack, rock</p><p>onstage inside a Faraday suit while making a 500,000-volt Tesla coil “sing”</p><p>along with 15-foot-long bolts of electricity striking the suit is unforgettable.</p><p>Nor will one easily forget the 40-foot-long, fire-breathing, heavy metal–</p><p>playing metal dragon. Or Colossus, the 70-foot-tall, 25-ton flying boulder</p><p>merry-go-round where little kids can pull on a rope attached to flying multi-</p><p>ton boulders hanging over their heads. These engineering entertainment</p><p>devices thrill and amaze thousands every year. Engaging young people and</p><p>getting them excited about science, engineering, technology, and math is a</p><p>key driver of the Maker Movement.</p><p>SUPPORT</p><p>This is a movement, and it requires support. Emotional,</p><p>intellectual, financial, political, and institutional support</p><p>are needed. The best hope for improving the world is us,</p><p>and we are responsible for making a better future.</p><p>Governments have spent billions, if not trillions, of dollars building</p><p>institutions of learning, research, development, and experimentation.</p><p>Almost none of them open their</p><p>labs up to the public. Actually, I’m hedging</p><p>here, I haven’t found any yet that do, but I’m sure there must be one</p><p>somewhere. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on building</p><p>research institutions across the United States and the world—and within</p><p>them very little self-directed, self-interested research is taking place. All of</p><p>that research requires approvals and funding from third parties, a general</p><p>manager’s approval, a budgeting committee’s approval, progression through</p><p>a stage-gated new product process, and the receipt of a grant from a</p><p>foundation or government.</p><p>Instances of access to the tools of research and development outside of</p><p>institutional direction are exceedingly rare. Why? It is a fact that the tools</p><p>of the industrial revolution have been exceedingly expensive, hard to use,</p><p>and of limited power—until now. They are now cheap, easy to use, and</p><p>powerful, yet we have not made any changes to how we organize access to</p><p>these tools. This must change. Those countries that change the fastest in this</p><p>regard will have a serious competitive advantage.</p><p>What can you do? Support policy changes at your institution that open</p><p>up the labs to others in the institution and to those in the local community</p><p>who don’t have access. Help allocate new funding to set up open access</p><p>fabrication studios. Pressure universities, government research labs, and</p><p>large manufacturing companies moving into your community to set up open</p><p>access fabrication studios.</p><p>We live in a world now where computers are everywhere. We carry</p><p>them in our pockets and call them phones. Similarly, the software tools to</p><p>design and produce things will be coming to your preferred screen; yet</p><p>without access to a Kinko’s for making things (a fabrication studio), you are</p><p>no better off than before.</p><p>Please do what you can to support your local maker community. We</p><p>have seen a number of technologies come out of makerspaces that have</p><p>already changed the world. These innovations were created cheaply,</p><p>quickly, and easily by small teams and, in most instances, by people from</p><p>outside the domain they were disrupting.</p><p>CHANGE</p><p>Embrace the change that will naturally occur as you go</p><p>through your maker journey. Since making is fundamental</p><p>to what it means to be human, you will become a more</p><p>complete version of you as you make.</p><p>Whenever one joins a movement, one changes. This is a good change.</p><p>Embrace it. Participating in the Maker Movement is a personal journey.</p><p>Each will look different. No two makers are exactly the same. No two paths</p><p>will be the same. But you will change. You will begin to see the world</p><p>through the eyes of someone who participates in creating. You will look</p><p>with wonder again at great artisanship. You will wonder how someone was</p><p>able to design this or that, and you will begin to appreciate local artists,</p><p>designers, architects, and artisanship in your community. You will wonder</p><p>where something was produced and who made it—you will look for the</p><p>story behind the artisanship You will ask about local talent and local</p><p>sources for things you never dreamed you cared about before.</p><p>Joining the Maker Movement and participating in it locally will open</p><p>up your life to the highest concentration of creative people in your</p><p>community. You will meet poets, laser etching their words on oak panels,</p><p>you will meet a financial planner building sets for her children’s play. You</p><p>will see someone start a hobby that leads to an avocation and then a</p><p>business employing a dozen locals. You will enjoy the excitement and joy</p><p>of giving those you love a piece of yourself through gifting to them</p><p>something you made just for them. Join me, join us, join the movement—it</p><p>will help you become you.</p><p>2</p><p>Free Innovation!</p><p>“Mark, you need to talk to the guy at the table over there.” Every day is an</p><p>adventure at TechShop. As CEO of the national membership-based do-it-</p><p>yourself (DIY) workshop and prototyping studio, I love my job and where I</p><p>do it. Why? Because TechShop is one of the few physical spaces dedicated</p><p>to fueling the next economic boom. And there are a bunch of amazing</p><p>people, crazy projects, and wonderful things going on here. It is an Alice in</p><p>Wonderland–like place.</p><p>My colleague and I wander over to a workstation where a middle-aged</p><p>man is bent over working on a poorly constructed, clunky, aluminum</p><p>blocklike structure.</p><p>“Hi, I’m Mark. What are you making?”</p><p>The man, who introduces himself as Mike, grins. “This? This is a</p><p>desktop diamond manufacturing device.”</p><p>“A what?”</p><p>“A desktop diamond manufacturing device.” He chuckles.</p><p>“Ask him how it works, Mark,” prods my coworker.</p><p>Somehow I sense I’m going to be the object of a sophisticated prank.</p><p>“OK, I’ll ask. How does it work, Mike?”</p><p>Mike points at the pile of sadly milled aluminum blocks. “First, you</p><p>need an airtight pressure chamber, like the one I just built. Then you need</p><p>95 percent hydrogen and 5 percent methane pumped into the chamber.”</p><p>Great. Flammable gases under extreme pressure.</p><p>“Then you buy a used microwave and scavenge the magnetron out of</p><p>it.”</p><p>Like I know what a magnetron is, I mutter to myself. Maybe it’s related</p><p>to a transmogrifier (one of Calvin’s favorite imaginary devices in the</p><p>Calvin and Hobbes cartoon series). I decide this person must be crazy—I’m</p><p>just not sure whether he’s crazy in a good way or a dangerous way.</p><p>Aloud, I repeat, “The ‘magnetron.’”</p><p>“Yes, a magnetron,” Mike confirms. “You need to get a lot of energy</p><p>into this thing to create the plasma ball you need.”</p><p>I need a plasma ball?!</p><p>“You can buy special equipment to create the radio waves to get the</p><p>energy; but that equipment is more expensive than a used microwave, and a</p><p>magnetron will do the trick.”</p><p>Hmm, you can get a new microwave for a couple hundred dollars. Do</p><p>you really need to save a few bucks when you are trying to control a</p><p>PLASMA BALL in a pressurized cloud of explosive gases?</p><p>“So, Mike,” I venture. “Hydrogen is fairly flammable. Right?” I’m</p><p>thinking Hindenburg. He nods. “Methane is not inert either . . .” He nods</p><p>again. “. . . and a ‘plasma ball’ from a magnetron?” I finish.</p><p>“Yep.” Mike smiles, pleased that I am following. “And diamonds just</p><p>fall out.”</p><p>“Of course.” I can’t help it; my voice betrays my incredulity and</p><p>skepticism.</p><p>Mike tells me that he plans to fire up this unlikely contraption over the</p><p>weekend. I confirm that he plans on doing it in his garage and not our</p><p>workspace. He points to the holes needed for the gas and the view port from</p><p>which to watch the diamonds grow (yes, a view port so you can put your</p><p>face up close to a plasma ball of energy in a chamber of explosive gas</p><p>under extreme pressure) and describes how he milled the thing himself.</p><p>I learn that Mike is a physicist who has started two diamond-deposition</p><p>tool companies over the last 30 years, that he is “crazy” in the good way,</p><p>and that since the firms he helped to start were focused on tools, they never</p><p>got into making gems—much to Mike’s dismay.</p><p>Now he is trying to grow a solid diamond ring for his wife. No metal,</p><p>just diamond. Singular. He plans to make a large diamond with a hole in it.</p><p>What does this have to do with failure-free innovation? Glad you asked.</p><p>We live in an era now where “nothing” is very close to what it costs to</p><p>venture. That is one of the major enablers of the coming creativity and</p><p>innovation explosion: In this day and age, one can “fail for free.”1</p><p>THE $64,000 QUESTION</p><p>Edison routinely failed thousands of times before discovering what he</p><p>needed. James Dyson, creator of the bagless vacuum cleaner, went through</p><p>5,127 designs before he was satisfied. Neither viewed each experiment as a</p><p>failure, but rather as another step on the road to success. This point of view</p><p>is normal in the product development community. Commercial labs like the</p><p>one that Edison set up, or that DuPont or 3M run, assume these costs and</p><p>bear them in development. However, the cost of failure and experimentation</p><p>drives risk aversion and limits innovation. Which leads me to ask, what is</p><p>the cost of failure today? What did it used to</p><p>look like? What other factors</p><p>limit innovation?</p><p>Mike, the diamond maker, is retired. I doubt that he needs to work, but</p><p>we see him in the shop routinely. Let’s “unpack” what is going on from an</p><p>enablement perspective.</p><p>Within a couple of weeks of our meeting, Mike had another pressure</p><p>chamber milled out and working in his garage. The second version looked</p><p>much, much better than the “first article.” A first article, in new product</p><p>development speak, is the first physical prototype.</p><p>The fully burdened costs (including engineering time, employee time,</p><p>amortized costs of office equipment, buildings, utilities, shareholder ROI</p><p>expectations, etc.) of a first article can be extraordinary. Fifteen years ago,</p><p>you would have needed a $20,000 design computer, $10,000 in design</p><p>software (or $100,000 if you worked on cars or airplanes), and an</p><p>experienced mechanical engineer to do the design of a pressure chamber.</p><p>Odds are, it would have cost $20,000 or more just to do the design. You</p><p>would have then taken those drawings to a machine shop where they would</p><p>mill it out for you—another $5,000 to $10,000. And it would not work.</p><p>That’s the process. It typically takes three iterations, or more, to get to a</p><p>working first article (assuming you are not doing “new to the world” design</p><p>work). The time that all this takes, between meetings with the designers,</p><p>reviewing plans, submitting them to manufacturing, and scheduling all this</p><p>around other work, is easily six months or more. That just gets you the</p><p>pressure chamber.</p><p>One of the key concepts in design is to fail fast, as time is one of the</p><p>things that can’t be recovered. A classic text on the topic states that half of</p><p>all the profits of an innovation can be lost with a six-month delay.2</p><p>Back to our story. I asked Mike what he thought it would have cost to</p><p>get to his first article if he didn’t do it himself. He had been in the business</p><p>for 30 years and had routinely had this type of work done.</p><p>“Eighty thousand dollars,” was his reply.</p><p>“What has it cost you so far?” I asked.</p><p>“Under $1,000.”</p><p>Would the average reader of this book spend $80,000 to pursue a dream</p><p>with no assurances that it would work? Probably not. However, my guess is</p><p>that most could spend $1,000 to pursue their dreams.</p><p>The point is this: Failure has now fallen to the discretionary income</p><p>level. And if it is discretionary, from a macroeconomic perspective, it is</p><p>free. Amazingly, we have begun to shift nonproductive, disposable,</p><p>discretionary income and time into potentially productive investments while</p><p>maintaining the same level of spending.</p><p>Again, when it costs $100,000 to fail, the money does not come out of</p><p>our disposable income. It probably comes from a second mortgage if you</p><p>are an individual. You might be able get it from an angel group or venture</p><p>capital group, though this is not likely. When something costs that much</p><p>money, the risks are high and you are using serious capital that has many</p><p>other potential uses. Conversely, at $1,000, instead of taking it out of the</p><p>house in the form of a mortgage, borrowing against your 401(k) savings</p><p>account, or raising it from an angel group, you would likely just use</p><p>disposable money—discretionary money otherwise used on lattes, movies,</p><p>golf, or a vacation. Money that is “disposable” is generally used to</p><p>consume, not invest. But now, investments, new product ideas, better</p><p>mousetraps don’t cost $100,000 to develop—they cost $1,000. This allows</p><p>people to shift their disposable money into development money. The</p><p>difference here is that development money might provide a return on</p><p>investment, it might improve the human condition, it might save lives,</p><p>increase productivity, even save money such that there is more discretionary</p><p>income. Disposable money used to go to eat does none of this.</p><p>The unstated point of “free failure” is that we now innovate for free. A</p><p>critical by-product of this new reality is that this means almost anyone can</p><p>afford to innovate. Yes, almost anyone. We just had our first homeless man</p><p>launch his prototyping service. He had technical skills but lost his place in</p><p>Middle America due to some medical issues. He found his way back</p><p>through access to tools.</p><p>The “failure is free” idea comes out of the software/e-commerce world.</p><p>It values the time one spends on a project at zero. It assumes that the</p><p>computer hardware and software needed are already bought or can be had</p><p>for free. This is not far from the truth. Today, instead of a $10,000 computer</p><p>and expensive design software, a $500 laptop and Autodesk Inventor</p><p>software will suffice to design a first-article pressure chamber.</p><p>We often value our time very differently depending on what we are</p><p>doing and what our opportunity costs are relative to the activity we are</p><p>participating in. Inventors and innovators see the time they spend creating</p><p>something either as an investment in the future with hopes of a large return</p><p>on that investment or simply the cost of pursing their passions. They equate</p><p>their current investment of time at zero in terms of real current costs. They</p><p>view the education and training they have received to get them where they</p><p>are today as a sunk cost (zero). As a result, everything else becomes a</p><p>variable cost. They have real costs to live and work, but they are doing their</p><p>inventing in their “spare time.” Or they are using their savings or other</p><p>people’s money.</p><p>When I ask the entrepreneurs in our space what they would be doing if</p><p>we were not there for them, most of them say they simply would not be</p><p>creating a product, tinkering, or working on the next big thing at all. If the</p><p>cost were going to be $80,000 or $100,000 versus $1,000 and their time,</p><p>they would just find another job, watch TV, or go play golf.</p><p>The choice between innovating or not because of the expense is an</p><p>“innovation barrier.” In the past, the cost to get the information, tools, and</p><p>resources (money, people, and time) were beyond the reach of all but the</p><p>most wealthy, passionate, or crazy. At $100,000 invention isn’t done. At</p><p>$1,000 it is! With free software, cheap computers, and cheap prototyping,</p><p>an invention can be developed. Without it, it’s TV time. Welcome to the</p><p>new world of “free” innovation and creativity.</p><p>TARP CLIP</p><p>I love 3D printers. They rock. My favorite one prints in three dimensions</p><p>using plastic wire that it melts and then spits out like an ink-jet printer at</p><p>1,400 dpi. It builds the prototype one small globule at a time from the base</p><p>on up.</p><p>A story that the manufacturer of this printer repeats is about a couple of</p><p>guys who used the 3D printer to create a tarp clip that cinches tightly when</p><p>a loop of rope is run through it. It speeds up the time needed to attach tarps</p><p>to the bed of a truck. The inventors used a computer to design the clip. Then</p><p>they printed out a series of clips on the 3D printer to get the clip the way</p><p>they wanted it. One of the nice things about this printer is that it produces</p><p>the prototypes in particularly hard plastic—ABS. This is often a target</p><p>manufacturing material. Not only did these guys have a “first article,” they</p><p>actually had a production prototype they could show to potential buyers.</p><p>Very cool.</p><p>With the production prototype in hand, these guys created a full-color</p><p>backing card for a blister pack using a color printer and basic card stock,</p><p>and they used a plastic vacuum forming machine to create a prototype</p><p>blister pack. Using these simple tools to create what looked like a finished</p><p>part, with a professional looking package, in a one-off custom blister pack,</p><p>the two entrepreneurs took their prototype tarp clip to a large hardware</p><p>chain. The buyer broke the blister pack open, destroying the only package</p><p>prototype (to the surprise and moderate consternation of the inventors),</p><p>examined the clip, and ordered 50,000.</p><p>You can do it too. How? Download Autodesk 123D to your computer</p><p>and get to work. Use a third-party broker to make your production</p><p>prototype (a few hundred dollars at a place like Ponoko.com or</p><p>Shapeways.com). Iterate three times in the next couple</p>
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Perguntas dessa disciplina

Grátis

Acerca das limitações ao exercício dos direitos autorais, marque a alternativa incorreta. No ordenamento jurídico brasileiro, os direitos autorais...

Grátis

Como vimos anteriormente, o uso, a modificação e a distribuição de qualquer criação protegida por direitos autorais, inclusive software, estão suje...
Marque a alternativa que apresenta APENAS bens de natureza tangível: Patentes, veículos e direitos autorais. Veículos, imóveis, máquinas e equi...
Quanto à autoria e ao registro das obras na Lei nº 9.610, de 1998 (Lei de Direitos Autorais), assinale a afirmativa correta. A Lei de Direitos Aut...
De acordo com Gama (2011 apud BRANCO, 2007) os direitos autorais se dividem em morais e patrimoniais. Escolha a assertiva correta: a. direitos aut...
Termos de Uso e Direitos Autorais - Responsabilidade Social (2024)
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