When I think of the
frontier, I picture Westward-Ho wagon trains with settlers and
supplies, or prospectors in the gold fields of California. However,
the domestic frontier has been 'closed' for about a century.
The frontier
offered an environment of unlimited opportunity, participants with a
variety of viewpoints and backgrounds, and plenty of raw materials or
other assets for the taking. For those willing to take the risk the
reward could be outstanding – exploiting the frontier led to robust
markets between traders and merchants back in the civilized East. The
frontier resulted in the dramatic expansion of the USA footprint and
an explosive growth in commerce rich with a wide variety of goods
Is a new frontier era
possible? Consider this:
Abundance of
assets – e.g., pelts, farmland, gold, wood, minerals
Diversity of
people – people from all over Europe, Russia, and elsewhere
Lack of control
– west of the Alleghenies, no one could tell you what to do.
Miller's contention is
that the frontier has returned - the university is the
modern-day frontier and hotbed of innovation. Here's why:
There is an abundance of
assets available at universities in the form of materials, equipment,
and a knowledge pool of the top minds in the technical and scientific
fields.
There is a diversity of
people with students and professors from a wide variety of countries,
viewpoints, and cultures.
There is a great deal of
freedom within the university environment - freedom of inquiry and
laxity oversight.
What has contributed to
this environment?
Communications and
computing power has evolved to be more powerful and less costly, to
accommodate changing needs
Global resources
combined with the hacker's mentality of trust and collaboration for
talent and materials
Project or work
groups of 1-2-3 individuals is the source of innovation – an 'I
don't accept that this can't be done' attitude – working without
the larger organization constraints of assignment and reporting.
Google, which grew from
the ideas by a couple of students at Stanford
and Facebook, the brainchild of a several Harvard
students, are successful examples of what can come from this frontier
setting. In addition, a growing portion of universities are
encouraging entrepreneurship through courses, incubators, and
start-up competitions. Innovation is aided by a favorable
environment, but come from the individual, as in the examples above.
Miller raised the question
– with this activity in the university environment of rich assets,
diversity of participants, and unbounded exploratory freedom – does
this predict a new expansive period of innovation and economic
growth?
Looking beyond the
university setting, we see a Makers Economy evolving. This is also
powered by inexpensive communications, global resources and markets,
availability of powerful computing equipment and tools, and an
additional element: hacker mentality.
The hacker mentality is a
combination of the challenge of doing something new or improving
something now existing, collaboration with others, sharing what's
been learned, and trusting others not to hijack their work. Hackers
use social media, blogs, and hackerspace message boards to research
reputations and reliability to determine who is trustworthy. The
final element of the hacker mentality is – nothing is impossible,
it is limited only by the span of interest – keep pushing on while
interest is glowing (set it aside when it wanes).
Cory
Doctorow wrote Makers,
a futuristic novel describing a similar environment, absent the
university element, where individuals would come together to create a
solution for an issue by repurposing parts and components readily
available. A non-traditional market developed with sales directly to
the end user, often from a table in an outdoor bazaar, or by word of
mouth. While the story may have been fiction as written, this is a
comprehensive blueprint for the growing DIY (do-it-yourself) movement
and the Makers Economy.
Today individuals and
small clusters of individuals are collaborating to develop innovative
solutions for existing issues or improving functionality for open
source software, or creating entirely new uses. Projects are imagined
not assigned, and the market is primarily the Direct
Economy with sales directly to the end user via the internet and
other direct sources.
Apps for the iPhone and
Android phone are examples of the Makers Economy, as is the Android
operating system which is open source with a multitude of independent
coders constantly improving and expanding its functionality.
This is a good example of
a new frontier opening up – Angry
Birds was not a project assignment by Apple, it was an idea by a
developer for a new game and it went viral when released. Philippe
Kahn was the innovator behind making a camera for the mobile
phone – which changed how people record and share experiences and
activities. Would either have made it through a traditional new
product approval process?
The
Makers Economy, like the old frontier, is rapidly opening new
channels of commerce (e.g., 0.9B on Facebook and 7B smartphones,
tablets, and other addressable devices), becoming a greater
contributor to the economy and its place continues to evolve.
Thanks
to the new frontierism, we may be watching an evolutionary growth
engine getting under way.
What
are the implications to traditional markets and the existing
regulatory structure?
