A few big names jump aboard the Maker Movement

My weekly book post on s+b's blogs is about a new book by Mark Hatch, the CEO of TechShop, who is betting that the new wave of high-tech DIY will bolster innovation and the growth of this nascent industry.

Seeking Scale in the Maker Movement

I cut my journalistic teeth during the heyday of total quality management, the improvement method that fostered a much-needed renaissance in the U.S. manufacturing sector in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Unfortunately, said renaissance was short-lived—globalization and offshoring made it more cost-effective to produce all manner of goods in developing nations, and the number of U.S.-made products dwindled. So it’s been something of a delight to watch the “maker” movement in its early stages of development.

We’ve covered this emerging trend in s+b several times. In 2011, Tom Igoe and Catarina Mota wrote about digital fabrication technology and the effect it might have on manufacturing. This past summer, Tom also reviewed Makers: The New Industrial Revolution (Crown Business, 2012), by former Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, which as the title suggests was highly optimistic in its assessment of the maker movement. On the flip side, the just-released Winter issue of s+b includes a warning from Tim Laseter and Jeremy Hutchinson-Krupat that we probably are not anywhere near a tipping point in at least one of the innovations that is enabling DIY manufacturing—3D printing.

This week, I’d add Mark Hatch’s new book, The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafter, Hackers, and Tinkerers (McGraw-Hill, 2013), to the mix...read the rest here.