Hardware Innovation Workshop

Ori Kayak — Among the many products innovations on display in our Showcase was the Ori foldable kayak. It's made of corrugated plastic, weighs less than 20 pounds. It folds to a tidy package for attaching to a backpack, carrying on a bike, or putting in your car's back seat. You can see above how light it is.

It was a thrill to be among the world’s most influential makers, delivering an important message to corporate America and doing so in an iconic setting: Xerox PARC. I was pleased to have had a role in pulling it off.

Our message was relatively simple: learn what’s happening and take advantage of it. The themes were: 1) open hardware is a powerful catalyst for innovation, 2) collaboration around design can yield tremendous results and 3) new fabrication technologies allow rapid and low cost prototyping. In addition we touched on new funding models (think Kickstarter and the Jobs ACT) and hardware incubation. Together these ingredients are fueling something we’ve almost forgotten about in the U.S.: hardware innovation.

Here are links to background and articles about the event.