Makerspace: Entrepreneurship and the Makerspace

February 18, 2020-How Michelle Sucher went from being a "Martha Stewart on a budget" to a successful small business owner using the Cincinnati Public Library's Makerspace.

December 17, 2020-How Presius Tajah uses the Cincinnati Public Library's Makerspace as a business tool.

FROM 2017: List of Greater Cincinnati Makerspace, Hakerspaces, and FabLabs

WCPO's coverage of Presius Tajah's makerspace to entrepreneur story

FROM THE ABSTRACT: "My paper explores makerspaces and how they theoretically contribute to business generation and sustainment. As defined in the paper, the maker movement will influence entrepreneurship through three principle channels. The maker movement attracts more individuals into product design, and thus may launch more “accidental entrepreneurs” if they find that their user solutions have a market. Secondly, the maker movement generates dense but diverse networks, creating new ideas and innovative thinking. Lastly, the maker movement lowers the costs for prototyping, making early sales and acquiring outside funding more realistic."

FROM THE ABSTRACT: "We found that the socio-technical environment of a makerspace promotes entrepreneurship by leveraging community-based values of social support, transparency, exploration, and empowerment."

FROM THE ABSTRACT: One area where the expansion of makerspaces has been the largest is in educational settings, at both K-12 schools and colleges. However, scant research to date has analysed whether students visiting a makerspace have any relationship with their professional goals or intentions. This study uses a survey conducted in New Orleans to analyse the predictors of what students use a makerspace, and the potential relationship visiting may have with entrepreneurial intent.

The papers in this symposium focus on a specific 21st-century example of the relationship between physical location, interpersonal interaction and the production of tangible commercial products: the role of local makerspaces in enabling entrepreneurial activity across the life cycle of the entrepreneurial process.

FROM THE ABSTRACT: This study explores makerspaces and how they contribute to economic
development through business generation and sustainment. Based on interviews with members and the management of makerspaces, along with local government officials in Georgia, the author finds four principal contributions to economic development: (a) creating a cultural change by encouraging entrepreneurship in the community, (b) supporting small business growth through the provision of services, (c) providing workforce training, and (d) increasing workforce retention.

FROM THE ABSCRACT: "This paper investigates the affective dimensions of entrepreneurial and creative work with the goal of making sense of the emergent collective identity of ‘maker.’"

FROM THE ABSTRACT: " Developing social innovation and entrepreneurship competences and skills of children and young people is on the agenda of European educational policy-makers. The European research and innovation project "DOIT – Entrepreneurial skills for young social innovators in an open digital world" suggests using makerspaces and tools, within schools and externally, to promote practice-based social innovation and entrepreneurial learning of children and young people."

Academic library spaces and services have widely broadened their missions away from providing only traditional research services and quiet spaces for study. Today, academic libraries are increasingly repurposing space and redesigning services to become the hub of innovation on university campuses. The literature explores entrepreneurship and academic libraries from many perspectives but with a common theme of the library as a leader in support of entrepreneurship initiatives on campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The process of setting up a business is known as entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business/or procedures."

A concise overview of the benefits of a makerspace for entrepreneurs.

An overview of the beginning of the maker movement inspiring entrepreneurs.