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Abstract
Problem, research strategy, and findings: The maker movement is placing small-scale manufacturing development on mayoral agendas across the United States and promises to reinvigorate production economies in central cities. To make effective policy, planners need more knowledge about the entrepreneurs at the center of this phenomenon. Here we present a qualitative investigation of urban maker economies. We draw on semistructured interviews with firms and supportive organizations in Chicago (IL), New York City (NY), and Portland (OR). A limitation of our approach stems from the unavailability of population parameters; we cannot confirm that our sample reflects the universe of maker enterprises. We find that makers draw on ecosystems comprising mainly for-profit firms. The public and nonprofit sectors are important in areas where markets do not provide the resources that fledgling makers require. We find 3 distinct types of maker enterprise: micromakers, global innovators, and emerging place-based manufacturers. Each makes a different contribution to local and regional economic development.
Takeaway for practice: Planners can maximize the potential of the maker movement by distinguishing among the 3 types of maker firms. Practitioners focused on employment creation should prioritize emerging place-based manufacturers, helping them build supply chain connections and ensuring that they have affordable space into which to expand. Artisanal micromakers also generate economic benefits, as do global innovators focused on product design and prototyping. But emerging place-based manufacturers have the highest potential for employment creation, both directly and via the business growth they stimulate.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to individuals representing numerous firms and organizations who gave their valuable time for interviews. We wish to thank Annie Levers for excellent research assistance and the Pratt Center for Community Development in Brooklyn (NY) and ADX in Portland (OR) for helping us generate our sample of maker enterprises.
Research Support
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation metropolitan entrepreneurship research program funded this study.
Notes
1. A key criterion we used to define makers—the integration of design and production activities—is not easily observed in secondary data. We used a set of decision rules developed by Heying and Marotta (Citation2015) to build a database of firms that met the criteria of a) developing and marketing new and novel products and b) engaging (or having recently engaged) in the manufacture of those products. We identified a total of 1,900 making candidates by compiling master lists of firms from a) lists provided by local organizations and programs such as Portland Made and Made in NYC, b) lists of past and present participants in makerspaces and maker faires, and c) internet searches for craft and artisanal manufacturers. Using our decision rules, we culled those lists, yielding databases of more than 200 makers in each city. We identified websites and social media accounts for each maker and used those resources to confirm that the maker remained active. Each active maker was then categorized according to type of product.
2. Interrater reliability tests produced a pooled Cohen's kappa statistic of .54, which indicates a fair degree of consistency in how the individual members of the research team applied the codes. See Wolf-Powers et al. (Citation2016) for further detail about the interview protocols and process.
3. A fuller discussion of the variation and historical character of local maker ecosystems is beyond the scope of this article. We address this at greater length in Wolf-Powers et al. (2016).
4. A larger company acquired this company several years ago, and they now develop only software that enables people to communicate with their home heating systems via their computers and smartphones.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Laura Wolf-Powers
Laura Wolf-Powers ([email protected]) is an associate professor of urban planning and policy at Hunter College, City University of New York.
Marc Doussard
Marc Doussard ([email protected]) is an assistant professor
Greg Schrock
Greg Schrock ([email protected]) is an associate professor
Charles Heying
Charles Heying ([email protected]) is an emeritus professor
Max Eisenburger
Max Eisenburger ([email protected]) is a doctoral candidate in urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign.
Stephen Marotta
Stephen Marotta ([email protected]) is a doctoral candidate in urban studies at Portland State University.