Entrepreneurship Research, Makers, and the Maker Movement

The maker movement differs from other forms of entrepreneurship in its use of engineering heuristics and focus on collaborative interactions around specific technological tools and practices fostering innovative outcomes. As a practice and a field for scholarly investigation, it provides new opportunities for broadening theoretical assumptions concerning entrepreneurship, management, and organizational research. For example, we argue that the maker movement generates unique forms of innovation and entrepreneurship in areas that have historically been dominated by larger and better-endowed organizations. We frame our contribution through Herbert Simon’s perspectives on the science of the artificial and the philosophy of technology, focusing on makers as designers who are intent upon improving – they might say “hacking” – what they encounter in the natural world. Makers do not accept the environment as they find it, but instead artificially reshape it to their own designs.