MAKE, Makers in the Washington Post

Photo by Matt McClain for the Washington Post

Washington Post writer Michael S. Rosenwald has a piece in today’s Sunday Business section entitled “Tech mogul? Nope. Any old hack will do.” It looks at the impact that the maker movement is having on real-world innovation and product development. Here are a few salient quotes:

Kleinman is a maker, a word derived from MAKE magazine, the glossy bible of everyday hackers using social networks, do-it-yourself-then-show-it-off Web sites, cheap parts from China, and blissfully simple microprocessors to modify or invent new electronic products for their houses, cars, offices and back yards.

Recent studies show consumers now spend more money tweaking and inventing stuff than consumer product firms spend on research and development. It’s more than $3.75 billion a year in Britain, and U.S. studies under way now show similar patterns. Makers are even morphing into entrepreneurs, with some of the best projects, including Kleinman’s, raising money for commercial development of self-funding Web sites such as Kickstarter, where anyone with a credit card can chip in to back cool ideas.

Major companies such as Ford are, after years of resisting inventor gadflies, inviting makers to submit product tweaks. “This is the democratization of technology,” said K. Venkatesh Prasad, a senior engineering executive at Ford.

Tech mogul? Nope. Any old hack will do