Innovation networks tend to cluster around specific regions because all the necessary ingredients of finance, people, infrastructure & regulation tend to converge in one area by accident & design.

Where will the 3D Printing Industry Cluster?

Contributed by | Vozag.com

Innovation networks tend to cluster around specific regions because all the necessary ingredients of finance, people, infrastructure & regulation tend to converge in one area by accident & design. Tiny initial advantages (e.g. Stanford University) tend to magnify into network effects (e.g. great engineering talent attracts financiers which attracts more talent & so on).  Therefore, it is fascinating to watch the nascent 3D Printing & handicap which area would become the cradle of 3D printing innovation.

One of the most important factors in trying to forecast a future cluster is to try to understand where the leading financiers in an industry are located. For e.g. Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures (the VC firm behind Twitter, Tumblr, Etsy & other leading companies) is based out of New York City & led the financing of Shapeways, the leading 3D printing market place. Shapeways actually moved its operation from Netherlands to New York & had an easier time raising its Series A financing because of that. The Series C expansion capital was provided by  Chris Dixon, a partner at the leading venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. Chris was earlier based out of New York City but then moved to Silicon Valley when he joined Andreessen Horowitz.  Shapeways themselves may have been attracted to New York because of Makerbot’s large presence in New York. Could these tiny advantages of initial companies & financier interest tip the balance in favor of New York City?

However, with the rise of Crowdfunding, do institutional capital networks such as venture capital play such an important role in seed funding? Vozag analyzed Kickstarter financing data from 32 3D printing projects that raised more than $100k. The analysis revealed that the original teams & projects were based all over the US & the world. The financing map reveals projects in Utah, Colorado, Montana, South Dakota & Oregon.

Will the rise of crowd funding networks & its distributed nature of financing break the paradigm of clustered industry corridors? Or will only the seed financing be distributed & as companies grow up, will they naturally cluster along a corridor?

 

 

The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of RoboticsTomorrow

Comments (0)

This post does not have any comments. Be the first to leave a comment below.


Post A Comment

You must be logged in before you can post a comment. Login now.

Featured Product

3D Vision: Ensenso B now also available as a mono version!

3D Vision: Ensenso B now also available as a mono version!

This compact 3D camera series combines a very short working distance, a large field of view and a high depth of field - perfect for bin picking applications. With its ability to capture multiple objects over a large area, it can help robots empty containers more efficiently. Now available from IDS Imaging Development Systems. In the color version of the Ensenso B, the stereo system is equipped with two RGB image sensors. This saves additional sensors and reduces installation space and hardware costs. Now, you can also choose your model to be equipped with two 5 MP mono sensors, achieving impressively high spatial precision. With enhanced sharpness and accuracy, you can tackle applications where absolute precision is essential. The great strength of the Ensenso B lies in the very precise detection of objects at close range. It offers a wide field of view and an impressively high depth of field. This means that the area in which an object is in focus is unusually large. At a distance of 30 centimetres between the camera and the object, the Z-accuracy is approx. 0.1 millimetres. The maximum working distance is 2 meters. This 3D camera series complies with protection class IP65/67 and is ideal for use in industrial environments.