Future of Manufacturing
Core Team
Future NOW Blog
Global Food Outlook Virtual Exchange
Mar 19, 2013
The Coming Age of Networked Matter
Mar 05, 2013
Checking-in to Well-being
Mar 04, 2013
Shanzhai: An Open Platform for Innovation at SXSW
Feb 27, 2013
Are Artists the Future of Community Health?
Feb 25, 2013
Future of Manufacturing
New Manufacturing, New Manufacturers: Interpreting the New Rules of Production
About the Program
For the past two hundred years, we have been organizing the production of goods using traditional corporate institutions to create efficiencies via large-scale factories and rational systems. But manufacturing today—as a practice, a sector, and a way of life—is in the midst of a broad, long-term shift that is transforming every aspect of the way things get made.
We are seeing the rise of vibrant communities of smaller scale, fast-moving, and globally connected inventors, builders, and investors, who are working with a new set of assumptions about profit margins, production processes, creativity and industry, and maker-user relationships. These offer the first glimpses of a new set of rules of production that will shape the coming decades.
The 2013 Future of Manufacturing initiative is an opportunity to immerse yourself in the laboratory of actors, innovations, and thought processes that will shape the this new path to production.
Related Info + Projects
2013 Research Agenda
The future of manufacturing is taking shape today in unexpected ecosystems of people, places, processes, and technologies.
Experimental spaces that blur the line between classroom, garage, retail store, gallery, and factory floor. Open hardware facilitators. “True fans” and “true believers.” Crowdfunding platforms. These are just some of the building blocks that are helping a new generation of entrepreneurs, designers, amateurs, and inventors move from making to manufacturing.
Along the way, these new manufacturers are up-ending traditional industrial processes. Witness Eric Stackpole and David Lang of OpenROV, who are building a telerobotic submarine via San Francisco’s TechShop and Kickstarter. Or the GE Garages project, a pop-up “manufacturing co-lab” that brings together local makers and the public for hands-on experiences. These experiments, and others like them, are the proving ground for the next-generation rules of production. How will these new rules of production change the way we create wealth and value? How will they challenge and inspire traditional manufacturing and retailing organizations?
Join us as we immerse ourselves in an extended face-to-face conversation with cutting-edge makers and manufacturers and collectively explore the implications of the new rules of production for your organization.
2013 Deliverables
- New Manufacturing Immersive Learning Workshop
In Fall 2013, a combination of site visits, expert panels, and IFTF research findings will give us firsthand knowledge of the new rules of production, and a structured process will help convert future visions into actionable strategies. - New Manufacturing Rules of Production Report
This report will chart the key future forces shaping new manufacturing. Through independent primary ethnographic research with people at the frontiers of new manufacturing practices, IFTF will report back the new rules and characteristics of the emerging manufacturing ecosystem.
Become a Member Today
For more details on the Future of Work Program or how to become a member, contact Sean Ness:
- online contact form
- sness@iftf.org
- 650-233-9517