As a contributor to the hoped-for renewal of the manufacturing sector, the maker movement has commanded significant attention, from the White House and in city halls across the U.S. Our new research brief, funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, provides new knowledge about makers as entrepreneurs.
To capture the ways that makers build businesses in response to distinctive local opportunities and resources, we interviewed nearly 100 firms in New York City, New York, Chicago, Illinois and Portland, Oregon. Because maker-entrepreneurs draw on place-specific design, production, financing and marketing resources, we also interviewed more than 40 firms and organizations – public, private, and non-profit sector – that comprise the “maker entrepreneurial ecosystems” of those three cities.
