A report in issue 264 (January 2008) of UK computer magazine PC Plus details Intel’s current research in various fields (no online version of this article unfortunately).  While many of the areas covered relate to processors, and as such are outside the scope of this website, one project is very interesting from the point of […]

Wikinomics, or to use its full title “Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” is a chronicle of how traditional collaboration - in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention centre - has been superceeded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.

The book opens by telling the story of Goldcorp Inc., a mining company […]

A recent post on this site profiled FellowForce, an open innovation project that acts as an intermediary between enterprises and individual innovators. At the time I had noted that the FellowForce website had certain limitations which limited the prospects for success. However, since then FellowForce has made an innovation of its own that […]

CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com, has recently announced a new online Books on Demand service.
CreateSpace was originally founded as CustomFlix Labs, Inc. in 2002 and acquired by Amazon.com Inc. in 2005. Prior to launching the Books on Demand service, CreateSpace was already providing inventory-free, physical distribution of CDs and DVDs on Demand, and video […]

The Make Magazine Blog recently carried a short post about a demo page depicting an ‘online digital manufacturing’ service on the site of 3D technology company Digital Reality. The copy on the page says that users can “create and sell custom toys, jewelry, motorcycle accessories, accurate fine scale modeling parts, promotional products, and millions […]

The Wealth of Networks is Yochai Benkler’s heavyweight analysis of the state of the internet in the early part of the 21st Century. In the book, Benkler argues strongly in favour of what he calls ’social production’, which harnesses impulses, time and resources that, in the industrial information economy, would have been wasted or […]

Erick Schonfeld, editor-at-large of Business 2.0 magazine and presenter of The New Disruptors on CNNMoney , recently visited a startup called Desktop Factory. This company is involved in developing 3D printing hardware, and aims to bring their product within financial reach of home users within a few years.
The most interesting aspect of Desktop Factory’s […]

Back in November 2006, I speculated as to the type of businesses which might emerge using a hybrid of mass customization, crowdsourcing, micro manufacturing and online factory business models. One such hybrid has emerged recently in New Zealand. Ponoko describes itself as the world’s first personal manufacturing platform where anyone can click to […]

Business Week’s SmallBiz section carries a feature on five small businesses that have implemented mass customization. The five are American Art Resources, Chip-N-Dough, Zyrra, Choiceshirts, and Name Maker.
The most interesting general trend from the article is that several of the interviewees refer to the fact that they had to develop proprietary technologies themselves to […]

Internet custom products marketplace company Zazzle recently announced that it had acquired Confego, a San Francisco Bay Area company that provides software that enables brands to offer fully customized apparel, bags and footwear designed from the ground up. Confego co-founders Brennan Mulligan and David Gross have joined Zazzle effective immediately.

Confego manages order fulfillment and […]

Slacker, Inc. has recently announced the creation of “Personal Radio,” which enables U.S. consumers to customize their own radio stations and listen to them wherever they happen to be. The Slacker Personal Radio is available in beta for PC streaming at www.slacker.com and later this year on Slacker Portable Radio Players via Wi-Fi and […]

The ARTIVIDUUM fashion label recently has recently opened a store in Frankfurt, the German metropolis on the Main river. In February 2007, owner Verica Hauch opened the doors to her new store. She opted exclusively for tailored and, more interestingly from this website’s perspective, mass-produced customized clothing. She uses the slogan “Be your […]

In July, 2001 Gale International negotiated a joint venture agreement with POSCO E&C (Korea’s largest engineering and construction company) and the City of Incheon, South Korea, for the planned development of a completely new city, called Songdo City. Located at the site of General MacArthur’s 1950 landing, Songdo will be the first “new” city […]

A few developments have taken place in the Nordic countries recently that seem to suggest a more advanced enthusiasm for and understanding of user-centred innovation.
Previously, I wrote about how the Danish government has become the first in the world to establish as a national priority, in the words of a government policy statement, “strengthening user-centered […]

I am a little late in writing about this, but it is worthwhile: Last month The Guardian, a UK newspaper, described how Moshe Einat is developing new inkjet technology that uses thousands of ink drops rather than a small number of nozzles.
Einat is a lecturer and researcher at the College of Judea and Samaria […]