Open Source Hardware needs ethical and sustainability-oriented communities!

“empowering innovation” that expands access to technological innovations in waves, to new segments of society. My argument at this point is exactly this: open source hardware (open source in general) or more properly an innovation that is actually based on the commons can have this role today, that of giving us the opportunity to extend access to innovations without the need for capital, now more interested in financial speculation that the impact on the transformation of society. It seems clear, therefore, who’s the final target to be engaged in this revolution, in the absence of the interest of large financial investors: we are looking for communities, even if we didn’t realize it yet. We are trying to tell you that thanks to these new tools there’s now a way to take responsibility – as a community – to support innovation by directing the rudder to impact and growth of a long-term ecosystem rather than thinking about quarterly earnings.

Brilliant contribution, excerpted from Simone Cicero:

(read the original for access to important graphics)

“It appears clearly that, at least in some emerging markets (already mentioned here eg: drones or 3d printers) open source is being configured as a great common denominator of a transition from mass-market to a micro niches one, based on cultural expression of independent creators (also thanks to the incredible role that crowdfunding is having).

New models to support this transaction emerge every day: just a few days ago, while I was in Brussels for the OuiShare summit, I had the good fortune to chat with Sylvain Le Bon, founder of the OpenInitiativeproject and OpenFunding, a very effective idea: to fund open source software (and why not, open source hardware) feature by feature, again increasing the ability of the community to address and support creators.

But the question that arises, therefore, regardless of who is the final target of the movement, is this: who will create the common basis on which to innovate in a open way? In the biggest success stories to date it was still linked to a university: it was Cambridge for Raspberry PI, Bath for RepRap… Arduino itself was born in an institution of higher education, even if private, the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea. Not to mention the work that the CERN has done in the field.

I do not think, however, that in the long run, however we shall believe that the leadership of this movement can emerge from research: what is needed is closing the circle with civil society and find new players to be the leaders of this transformation, of which we definitely need, from the industrial transformation point of view. But who will have this role?

* Community powered markets

I always thought that the open source hardware movement lacked a key component, the community. If we look at the movement today, there is indeed a plethora of companies active in the field, effectively described recently by making society, but projects that arise from or refer to large communities, are still few.

There are whole areas of the market where open source hardware has not yet had the chance to have his say, but where the potential is there to express amazing projects. The communities connected to these areas, could therefore support those actors, being them commercial or not, who are able to be the spark that starts the whole thing: think about what they are doing at Wikispeed OSVehicle with the automotive industry. This is precisely the role that these communities must have: ask, drie and sustain shared innovations.

These communities can take charge of the effort to support economic and strategic projects related to vertical industries: automotive, marine, appliances, and so forth. Some areas have already expressed their flagship projects: it is already happening with the architecture and design, think Wikihouse and the role that the community has been behind the projects in question, a role very well told by Alastair few months ago right here.

On the other hand, many today advocate to reinterpret the business in a new key: in a perspective that goes exactly in this direction. Only a few days ago, an incredible post by Lee Bryant on post shift:

The core of his thesis is that there are three broad types of innovation (ndr: Empowering innovation, Sustaining innovation, Efficiency innovation) and they combine to form a cycle of invention, improvement and optimisation that produces free capital to begin the cycle of innovation once again; but what we are seeing today is that cycle is broken and cash is being hoarded at the expense of value-creation.

That, quoting the famous Clayton Christensen referred to the dynamic that we seen in the last few years: innovation focus in efficienting systems so that to drain capital from industry and shift them to the world of finance where speculation often offers much more than others approaches, especially with the sluggish economy in which we live.

So, in that way, we could bring us back to seek the “empowering innovation” that expands access to technological innovations in waves, to new segments of society. My argument at this point is exactly this: open source hardware (open source in general) or more properly an innovation that is actually based on the commons can have this role today, that of giving us the opportunity to extend access to innovations without the need for capital, now more interested in financial speculation that the impact on the transformation of society.

It seems clear, therefore, who’s the final target to be engaged in this revolution, in the absence of the interest of large financial investors: we are looking for communities, even if we didn’t realize it yet.

We are trying to tell you that thanks to these new tools there’s now a way to take responsibility – as a community – to support innovation by directing the rudder to impact and growth of a long-term ecosystem rather than thinking about quarterly earnings.”

1 Comment Open Source Hardware needs ethical and sustainability-oriented communities!

  1. AvatarMark Janssen

    Aren’t they called hacker/makerspaces. In any case, I am looking to take a role in leading these efforts myself to combing art, science, and community.

    I was part of a very good effort in Santa Fe (sf_x) which was ahead of its time (and they already had a director chosen), but maybe the world is more ready for them now.

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