{"id":1159,"date":"2012-01-11T14:53:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T14:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/archives\/1159-innovation-amplifier-crowdsourced-capital-and-on-demand-digital-fabrication.html"},"modified":"2014-07-03T17:15:11","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T17:15:11","slug":"innovation-amplifier-crowdsourced-capital-and-on-demand-digital-fabrication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/innovation-amplifier-crowdsourced-capital-and-on-demand-digital-fabrication","title":{"rendered":"Innovation Amplifier : Crowdsourced Capital and On-Demand Digital Fabrication"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have seen many successful projects that leveraged Kickstarter and Shapeways<\/a> to bring a creative concept into reality, but never quite so purely as the Crania Anatomica Filigre: Me to You<\/a> project by Joshua Harker. <\/p>\n

We have mentioned Josh’s project previously on the Shapeways Blog<\/a> but now that the project has succeeded and shipped it is worth looking back over what made it such an amazing story of scaling creative practice without financial risk by leveraging crowdsourced capital and on-demand digital fabrication<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Creating an environment where it is safe to experiment and fail with minimal risk is critical to a culture of innovation. In the past this would have taken place in universities, artist studio’s, ateliers, hacker labs or innovation incubators such as the one that Shapeways has emerged from.<\/p>\n

Now that place of innovation is online thanks to enablers such as Shapeways and Kickstarter<\/a> where someone can pitch a concept, gather support and realize their ideas without risk. If an idea fails, there is no significant financial loss for those proposing the idea, or for those who back the idea, just an incredibly fast learning cycle that allows creative entrepreneurs to iterate and succeed.<\/p>\n

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Joshua’s story is a fantastic case study of this occurence, he was looking to use Kickstarter to get his artwork out to a wider audience and raise $500 to fund the production. He placed it on Kickstarter<\/a> with a modest target and was overwhelmed with backers pledging $77,271 then using Shapeways to exactly fulfil the production requirements with on-demand digital fabrication. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Below are just a few of the nearly 1,000 skulls Shapeways produced for Joshua and his backers.<\/p>\n

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