How are Micro Enterprises Adopting Emergent Technologies

This paper presents the results from a survey of emerging and micro SMEs, along with entrepreneurs, creative practitioners, and the new group of ‘makers’, who are beginning to adopt (or consider adopting) the newer entry-level emergent technologies such as 3D printing. A number of key findings are discussed: including, the prevalence of ‘self-taught’ users of these technologies; major business activity in the creative industry space; the importance of shared equipment usage by micro organisations in comparison to small companies using external bureau services. Unsurprisingly cost is still cited as a factor for poor uptake of emergent technologies, closely followed by a low awareness of 3D printing and its capabilities, and 3D printing supply chains. Skill levels reported by the participants for each technology highlighted that 3D printing had the most pro-users, which may highlight the increased access to such technologies for micro enterprises, typically reserved for incumbent organisations.