Treffer: Arduino – a global network for digital innovation

Digital technologies have changed the way we store, consume and create information and knowledge. At the aggregate level, the ease of knowledge distribution and creation in the digital economy gave rise to new forms of innovation. Innovative activities are increasingly taking place in self-organising networks [1]. The outcomes of this type of innovation have been impressive. For example, at the beginning of the 1990s nobody believed that Fortune 500 companies would trust so´ware that could not be ‘owned’ [2]. Today, open-source so´ware has been crucial to the emergence of the digital economy. Linux enabled Google to build cheap servers. Such programming languages as Java, Perl and Ruby have become the language of web 2.0 applications, and the free web-server so´ware Apache powers nearly half of all websites in the world. Increasingly, digitisation allows knowledge-intensive activities related to the development and production of any product or service to move beyond the boundaries of a single firm and to allow access by any organisation or individual to improve and develop it further. There is a growing movement of users of hardware products who are improving hardware, fuelled by ever-cheaper electronics, technical education and training material available online [2]. The internet allows communities to be built that are committed to solving particular problems and are capable of developing and designing almost any hardware or so´ware product. This is true for a smartphone, a car, a building or a supply-and-demand algorithm organising the matchmaking between sellers and buyers of agricultural products. Today, self-organising networks are increasingly developing advanced technologies and products underpinning the digital economy. Arduino, together with its community, is an example of how the development and production of open- source hardware takes place in a self-organising network rather than within the boundaries of a single firm. Founded in 2005 as a side research project at the Interaction Design Institute ...