Trends For 2012: Maker King On The Power Of Sharing

To support a new initiative from Intel aimed at uncovering and supporting young Innovators, PSFK has tapped some of the world’s established innovators to share some insights into what young entrepreneurs should be on the lookout for in 2012. We asked Bre Pettis of Makerbot to share some of his thoughts on the ideas that are exciting him in the coming year. Bre makes things that make things – and his company Makerbot produces robots that make things. Recently he noticed how openness can help drive innovation and so he founded Thingiverse where people share digital designs. Bre talked to PSFK about sharing between entrepreneurs and also between start-ups and their users. He told PSFK:

The Age of Sharing has begun. How will your entrepreneurial business leverage the power of sharing? At MakerBot, we make machines that make things for you on your desktop. We’ve created our sister site Thingiverse where users can share their digital designs for real things and our users have created a powerful community based on sharing and amazing new designs show up on the site every day that you can download and make for free.

MakerBot is open source and we share our design files for our machine so that our users can understand how a MakerBot works and customize it. As 2012 approaches, I challenge all entrepreneurs to explore new ways of sharing with your users and customers. You’ll know you’re on to something special when your users and customers share with each other.

Thanks Bre!

Sponsor note: PSFK has partnered with Intel to bring you insights and trend predictions from some of the world’s established innovators. But 2012 is a new year, and Intel is on the lookout for the next great Innovator. Intel’s expert panel will award one Innovator $50,000 and one Fan will win the right to determine which Innovator gets another $50,000, the proceeds of which will be used by the Innovators to bring to their great idea to life. If you think you are the next big thing, PSFK encourages you to submit your thoughts on Intel’s Facebook page.