Smart Makers Entrepreneurial Regional Ecosystem

The emergence of new prototyping technologies and the acceleration of e-sourcing and e-commerce are offering new types of entrepreneurs (makers and e-solo-entrepreneurs) opportunities that up to now could hardly be leveraged. Deployed on a large scale, the very same technologies may provide the foundation for both the reindustrialisation of certain regions and emerging industries. Finally, if combined smartly, these technologies may become outstanding accelerators in terms of leveraging the outcomes of R&D projects developed by individuals and SMEs.

This document examines the potential of an entrepreneurial discovery ecosystem resting on five pillars including:

• fablabs
• 3D printing
• short production run crowdsourcing
• crowdfunding
• e-commerce for small-series and handmade products.

It also discusses the mainstreaming of some of the business models associated with those five pillars with a view to delivering a reindustrialisation component for certain regions.

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