The creative movement in the eyes of an entrepreneur and its future

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The author of this article Makeblock founder Jianjun. The following is the text:

The creation is the concept that develops in the last two years, from the Baidu Index view, the heat of the word that creates a guest is suddenly rise at the end of 2012. As an entrepreneur in this field, I deeply feel the process of the rise of the domestic and foreign creation tide. Two years ago, when communicating with investors and media friends, it took a lot of effort to explain the concept of the creators and the relevant concepts; Now the people, the media, the capital, the officials have paid more attention to the creators. As an entrepreneur, you will often be asked, "How big is the market?" What will the concept of a creator develop in the future?

How big a customer this market is is a difficult question to answer, because it is not a mature market, there is no reference to other markets. Only from the trend of the creation of the movement to judge, here need to mention a book called "Creators: The New Industrial Revolution", is the former "Wired" magazine editor Anderson's work, his other two influential works called "Free" and "Long Tail theory." Anderson believes that through the use of the Internet and the latest manufacturing technology, we will enter an era of universal creation, everyone can be a producer, everyone's creativity is fully played, enough to trigger a new industrial revolution. The reason for the vigorous development of the movement is that the threshold of creation is reduced and more people can create it.

The specific reasons are the following:

1. Knowledge is more readily available in the internet age.

The idea is never scarce, but what the creators need more is to drive, to make the idea to need knowledge, ability, tool and so on. In the Internet age, access to new knowledge is too convenient, the internet has brought a significant benefit to human society is that greatly accelerated the spread of knowledge and popularization, so that the average level of knowledge and ability of human beings have been greatly improved, thus promoting the rapid development of science and technology, with the rise of online learning, this impact will become more far-reaching.

2. Technological advances have enabled previously high technology to be mastered and used by ordinary people.

Imagine the computer just came out when the whole room look like, now a random calculator can easily exceed the computing power, for DIY enthusiasts, a variety of available resources are quite rich, chips, sensors, programming, desktop CNC, laser cutting, 3D printing, There are also large Web sites and services API interfaces and factory flexible small-volume customization services (such as making an industrial-grade printed circuit board as low as two days, dozens of yuan), and so on, the use of these resources, the technical threshold and costs are continuing to decline, and will continue to decline.

3. The network makes communication and collaboration easier.

Based on the network, people all over the world can create a large operating system such as Linux, but also like the quirky model, people of different professional backgrounds based on the network division of Labor collaboration, complete a hardware product from idea to finished the whole process. The network let the creators no longer alone, no longer isolated.

Why is this time now starting to explode?

In fact, people in the virtual world of creative ability has been progress, a variety of design software, a variety of programming language features more and more powerful, more and more user-friendly, the computer just came out when only a few people can write programs to let the computer in accordance with their own ideas to run, now children can develop programs. In the physical world of reality, creation is not so easy, but thanks to the impetus of the following factors, creation in the physical world is beginning to become easier.

First, many low threshold electronic hardware development platforms began to appear, such as Arduino (born in 2005), Netduino (Hardware development platform supporting. NET language), Tessel (Hardware development platform supporting JavaScript language), etc. The emergence of these development platforms so that people can be more simple to interact with the physical world of reality, can easily interact with a variety of sensors, control a variety of motors, valves and so on.

Second, the emergence of more desktop manufacturing tools, desktop CNC, laser cutting machine and 3D printer allows people to real objects have more processing and transformation means. There are not too many restrictions on the creation of machinery, electronics and software.

Third, the mode of public financing can go farther, so that they can develop their hobby into a business, to become a full-time creators. Many of the products to create more customers, to help create better and faster creation, some of the success of the case also allows more creators more in-depth participation in the creation.

Finally, the convenience of online shopping makes it easier for creators to create. These small, materials, tools, devices, etc. that cannot be found in the conventional market can be easily purchased.

When the threshold of creation is lowered and will be easier in the future, is it not everyone who wants to create it? Is creation not the universal demand of the people?

First of all, we humans can have a good life today, instead of hunting around to eat the last meal without a meal, relying on is to create. According to Maslow's demand theory, People's demand level is divided into five levels: basic needs are at the bottom of the pyramid, social needs are centered, and the demand for self-realization is at the top of the pyramid. With the social progress, the bottom of the demand is gradually met, the most fire is the social needs, in a short period of time, this demand has spawned such an alligator such as facebook,twitter,tecent.

Self-realization involves creating, solving problems, exploring things, virtue, justice, etc. The need for self-realization once corresponded to a niche market, but as other requirements were met, people were more focused on the needs at the top of the pyramid. Here is an article on a more detailed description.

Creation is the human nature of the needs inside, once the other bottom of the demand is met, the threshold of creation is also greatly reduced, this demand will explode. The 3D printer, which is now on fire, is an example of satisfying people's need to create.

Let's talk about some trends in the campaign.

1. Users are changing

is no longer a good little white, users are not only consumers, the sense of participation is very important to users, and more and more know-how users do have the ability to participate in product creativity, design and improvement. For the creators, it is important that they want to have more control over the products they buy, they can go to hack and improve. And for businesses, when your users are more like creators than less white, it is time to reconsider the needs of users, perhaps enterprises need to produce is a friendly product, since a customer has the ability to go to hack, to improve the product, then why not open some interface to let the creators to toss, to DIY. When the user is not only a simple uniform use of products, but there are a variety of tricks to play products, the sense of participation, product fans, as well as crowdsourcing wisdom and so on, may be easier to achieve, then, there may be many users for the product design a variety of accessories, to form an ecological system. For example, the company that makes WiFi cameras opens up some hardware and software APIs that allow users to control more devices and devices over the network. If the appliance manufacturers open the control interface, let the user not only through the button over, but can let the user DIY through the network, Bluetooth control or other devices trigger, etc., GE has been doing (although GE has just sold the electrical department).

2. Long tail products will appear in large quantities

Long tail of the product demand has been in fact, the human needs are diverse, our current industrial structure can only pay attention to the Yuchangyu head of the public demand, and a large number of long tail demand has been suppressed. The emergence of network shopping to some extent to solve the problem of channels, put a long tail on the online shelves although the sales volume is small, but the addition of a product almost will not bring the shelf cost, long tail products to the electric platform to bring additional traffic, these long tail together will form a considerable profit. Public-chip model will further promote the emergence of long tail products, the public can advance the collection of long tail demand, so that a small minority of products in the initial stage can be pooled enough users to get enough money into production. On the other hand, with the increase in the number of people who have mastered the creation of skills, there will be more men engaged in the creation of long tail products, which have been existing and can not be met by the scale of industry needs, will gradually be met, and even some people are expected to be small demand for products began to

3. Flexible Manufacturing

When creativity is released, and when design and development is ushered in to the center of every garage and apartment, how does the manufacturing force match creativity? What kind of manufacturing do we need when more long tail products are on the line and more personalized customization needs to be met? There are two possible direction of change, one is manufacturing to the center, the manufacturing equipment is powerful and ubiquitous, everyone can have, everyone can become a manufacturer. Another is the center of the manufacturing industry, highly concentrated, highly flexible universal factory, can automatically produce a variety of small-volume personalized products, manufacturing is the service, just to the universal factory Send manufacturing documents, you can wait to produce goods delivered to the doorstep. Manufacturing capacity is like running water, you don't need to build a water treatment center at home, just buy water from one place.

Society will eventually be rich, the underlying demand in Maslow's theory of demand will be universally met, the demand for creation at the top of the pyramid will be released, and now is the time to meet people's social needs. The future opportunity may lie in meeting the needs of people, perhaps we will usher in a universal creation, All people create a People's era, the creation of all will bring us a better world.