Makers’ ambitions to do socially valuable things

Abstract: Neil Gershenfeld called the Maker movement the next digital revolution as it placed the means of fabrication on people's desks. This paper looks at makers' ambition to do socially valuable things and critically reflects on their potential impact, whether makers’ societal impact can be recognised on micro- , meso- or macro-level. Paraphrasing Schumpeter, who explained innovation as a ‘new combination of production factors’, social innovation can be defined as a new combination of social practices. To add an empirical dimension, via qualitative research we have explored the expectations and values of makers. We chose to proceed from the concrete to the abstract by approaching 30 Makers with very specific issues they knew from their day-to-day work and asked them regarding their social ambitions in terms of inclusion, education and environmentalism. Eventually these questions led then to insights on the threads we outlined above.