(Social) Innovation in Makerspaces: Re-embeddedness of Physical Production?

This chapter discusses innovation and its meanings, focusing on makerspaces: labs and collective spaces where a broad range of objects are made thanks to fast prototyping technologies. Such spaces are often imbued by a narrative centred on the sharing of information, open-knowledge and mutual help. They are conceived not only as production places, but also as spaces where interaction takes place, where people exchange ideas and, also, where social cohesion is built. The chapter focuses on the narrative of these places, claiming that they represent the loci where innovation is given a new meaning: its scope is aimed towards the community need and wellbeing instead of towards the market. Without celebrating such places, in the chapter the community’s engagement in fab labs is addressed by looking at several elements of their embeddedness. With this aim, the chapter traces a brief history of the meaning of innovation and the discourses around it. The obvious starting point is J. Schumpeter’s idea of innovation and creative destruction, where economy is moving forward by means of innovation, which finds its final goal in the improvement of society. Then, I will illustrate how, in R. Florida’s vision, creativity (and therefore innovation) is an imperative for individual economic success: it is a failure without creativity. Innovation is therefore the means to (individually) winning competition and it is exclusively directed to the market. Finally, I will discuss the emergence of the social innovation paradigm, where innovation is presented as being at the service of, and rising from, society. In this new perspective, innovation might be re-embedded in society to serve communitarian scopes.