Bevil Wood­ing

For those who have al­ways had an urge to cre­ate, there has nev­er been a more em­pow­er­ing time than the present.

The bur­geon­ing, glob­al­mak­er move­ment is putting pow­er in the hands of or­di­nary folk. Mak­ers, as they are called, can de­sign, fund, man­u­fac­ture, mar­ket and sell their own goods. Their ac­tions are re-shap­ing the fu­ture of prod­uct in­no­va­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and, ul­ti­mate­ly, bring­ing ben­e­fit to the econ­o­my.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the Do-It-Your­self (DIY) space has been de­fined by "how-to" con­tent, from how to change a door lock, to how to put to­geth­er a com­put­er. In the past few years, how­ev­er, DIY has evolved to more broad­ly de­scribe any ac­tiv­i­ty that in­cor­po­rates cre­ative skills to al­low some­one to de­sign or build some­thing on their own.

DIY is ap­plied in a more tech­ni­cal con­text, cov­er­ing ac­tiv­i­ties such as mak­ing cus­tom gad­gets like ro­bots, drones, and oth­er pro­gram­ma­ble de­vices like smart sen­sors, hacked to­geth­er us­ing soft­ware and tools freely avail­able on the web. It is this more tech­ni­cal ap­pli­ca­tion that lies at the heart of to­day's mak­er move­ment.

Con­tem­po­rary mak­ers have to their ad­van­tage the in­cred­i­ble pow­er af­ford­ed them by mod­ern tech­nolo­gies and a glob­alised econ­o­my that in­ven­tors and do-it-your­selfers of yes­ter­day could not have even dreamed of. To­day's mak­ers stand at the in­ter­sec­tion of art, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing and tra­di­tion­al DIY. They em­body a cre­ative dri­ve that blends an in­sa­tiable cu­rios­i­ty and ap­petite for knowl­edge with the fear­less­ness to press through fail­ures and try new ap­proach­es.

In­dus­tri­al-grade tools are now ac­ces­si­ble to or­di­nary con­sumers. Pow­er­ful soft­ware and hard­ware tools al­low mak­ers to de­sign and pro­to­type their cre­ations. Spe­cialised parts and ma­te­ri­als can now be eas­i­ly sourced on­line from ven­dors, or fel­low mak­ers around the world.

Seed cap­i­tal from crowd­fund­ing sites, cheap man­u­fac­tur­ing hubs, in­ter­na­tion­al ful­fil­ment, and e-com­merce dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vices such as Et­sy and Quirky help mak­ers com­mer­cialise their cre­ations. On­line so­cial net­works, mail­ing lists, and how-to train­ing video sites al­low mak­ers to form com­mu­ni­ties, col­lab­o­rate, fil­ter ideas and share ex­pe­ri­ences.

Com­mu­ni­ty is key to the strength of the mak­er move­ment. On­line fo­ra and re­al-world meet-ups pro­vide an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet, learn from and teach fel­low mak­ers and oth­er crit­i­cal play­ers. The mak­er move­ment, like any in­dus­try, can be con­sid­ered as an ecosys­tem of re­sources, each with an im­por­tant role in keep­ing ideas and in­ven­tions flow­ing.

Mak­er com­mu­ni­ties can be phys­i­cal, like mak­er­spaces; tem­po­ral - like hackathons, DIY mee­tups and con­ven­tions; or dig­i­tal - like on­line so­cial net­work­ing fo­ra, vir­tu­al ed­u­ca­tion spaces or con­tent por­tals. Whether on­line or of­fline, com­mu­ni­ties of shared in­ter­est pro­vide an im­por­tant plat­form for shar­ing knowl­edge and cre­at­ing a sense of be­long­ing.

The In­ter­net has fa­cil­i­tat­ed the amal­ga­ma­tion of tra­di­tion­al DIY; hack­ing and open source com­put­ing; peer-to-peer ed­u­ca­tion; and arts and craft, which now de­fines the mod­ern mak­er move­ment. Im­por­tant­ly, it is the In­ter­net that fa­cil­i­tates the ease by which com­mu­ni­ties of in­ter­est can now be formed to share knowl­edge, ideas and re­sources, glob­al­ly. It is the In­ter­net that is in­spir­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of mak­ers.

This can be seen in the as­tound­ing growth of the 10-year old peer-to-peer, e-com­merce web-com­pa­ny Et­sy. The on­line mar­ket­place now has over 54 mil­lion users and more than 1.4 mil­lion ar­ti­san sell­ers who have cre­at­ed over 26 mil­lion hand­made prod­ucts to be sold on the site. The site al­so did near­ly a bil­lion US dol­lars in rev­enue in 2014, a sign of the grow­ing eco­nom­ic clout of the glob­al mak­er move­ment.

They can cre­ate hard­ware ca­pa­ble of ex­plor­ing the out­er-space, or bring in­no­va­tions to mar­ket that were pre­vi­ous­ly the do­main of large, well-fund­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions. They share, in­spire, and mo­ti­vate, and in the process, they are re­shap­ing sci­ence, man­u­fac­tur­ing, ed­u­ca­tion and eco­nom­ics.

The ideals and prac­tices of the mak­er move­ment can ben­e­fit any busi­ness seek­ing to ac­ti­vate its in­no­va­tion po­ten­tial. Com­pa­nies can en­cour­age and re­ward mak­er–be­hav­iours in their em­ploy­ees by pro­vid­ing them with the op­por­tu­ni­ty and fa­cil­i­ties to share, de­vel­op and pro­to­type new ideas.

But the mak­er-cul­ture has broad­er so­ci­etal val­ue. Fos­ter­ing the mak­er mind­set can be linked to pro­vid­ing in­cen­tive and op­por­tu­ni­ty for cre­ative ex­pres­sion across so­ci­ety. Any coun­try se­ri­ous about in­creas­ing in­no­va­tion would need to em­bed the mak­er mind­set in­to its ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and mod­el be­fore its youth.

The mak­er move­ment is no pass­ing trend. It is al­ready bring­ing dis­rup­tions to man­u­fac­tur­ing, prod­uct in­no­va­tion and even sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion. It is al­so pre­sent­ing won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ties to har­ness la­tent cre­ative ca­pac­i­ty, im­prove in­sti­tu­tion­al and so­ci­etal in­no­va­tion po­ten­tial, ac­cel­er­ate learn­ing, and lever­age new plat­forms for col­lab­o­ra­tion, re­search and de­vel­op­ment. It is an im­por­tant man­i­fes­ta­tion of the eco­nom­ic land­scape to come. Or­gan­i­sa­tions will be well served to find ways to par­tic­i­pate, learn, and even help make the move­ment stronger.

Bevil Wood­ing is the Chief Knowl­edge Of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN (C-WBN) a val­ues-based in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tion and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor at Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, re­spon­si­ble for C-WBN's tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach ini­tia­tives. Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing and on In­sta­gram: abright­path