Please join us at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Chicago in our symposium on “Early Stage Entrepreneurial Action in Maker Spaces: the Habitats, the Inhabitants, and Their Social Impact,” Tuesday, August 13, 2024 11:30 – 13:00 CT (GMT-5/UTC-5) Location: Hyatt: Skyway 272).
Here’s a preview:
In our paper, “The Thrill Is Gone,” Russell Browder, Jacob Conley, Stella Seyb, and I analyze the evolution of the US makerspace population from its start in 2005 until the beginning of 2024. European hacker spaces began appearing as early as 1995, and about 10 years later, the first American maker spaces were founded. (In our research, we do not examine the population of makerspaces that are supported by institutional sponsors, such as schools, museums, libraries, and corporations.)
Early Beginnings
The creation of TechShop in 2006 marked an important milestone for the rise of commercial maker spaces in the United States, and nonprofit makerspaces arose in New York city, Washington DC, and several California cities by the end of 2008. The institutional infrastructure of the maker movement got a boost with the founding of Make Magazine in 2005 and the first Maker Fair in 2006. Several popular books on makers and the maker movement appeared in the next decade and public institutions such as schools, libraries, and museums began adding maker spaces in the 2010s.
The founding of nonprofit maker spaces rapidly eclipsed the rate of founding of commercial makerspaces and makerspace clubs, reaching a peak of 42 foundings in 2013. After 2013, the number of foundings gradually dropped until the Covid 19 pandemic hit, with only 11 created since then. Informal clubs were popular early on, reaching a high of 29 foundings in 2011. After that, however, their popularity waned, and none were founded after 2018. The TechShop model of trying to rapidly scale up a franchise style model attracted no followers, and from a peak of 11 foundings in 2014, numbers fell sharply until 2020, after which only one commercial space was created.
The Bubble Bursts
The bankruptcy of TechShop in 2018, coupled with Make Magazine’s ceasing operations in 2019 and the cancellation of the New York City Maker Fair marked a turning point in the population’ s evolution. The final blow was the 2020 Covid 19 pandemic, during which many spaces temporarily closed and after which only eight maker spaces of the types we are studying were created.
Nonprofit maker spaces were the most resilient, as in 2018 about 84% of the 261 nonprofits found up to that point were still active, compared to only 21 percent of the 134 clubs. Commercial spaces fared better by 2018, with 70% of the 71 still active. However, subsequent years took a heavy toll on clubs, with many more ceasing operations and no new clubs being created. Similarly, 22 of the 49 commercial spaces operating in 2018 had closed by the beginning of 2024.
Our plot of Kaplan-Meier survival curves by type of Makerspace empirically demonstrates the high survival rate for nonprofits. By contrast, clubs experienced a high liability of newness, with only slightly more than 60% surviving the first three years. Commercial spaces were more fortunate than clubs, with about three quarters surviving at least five years. However, their likelihood of survival continued declining as they aged, unlike the curve for nonprofits, which shows only a small decline after the first few years.
The Population has Stabilized
The result of these demographic trends in the three types of maker spaces is that the population is now dominated by the 237 nonprofit maker spaces followed by about 50 clubs and less than 30 commercial spaces. The combination of falling founding rates and high exit rates for the clubs and the commercial spaces raises the question of what’s next.
In our presentation, we speculate about what might happen in the maker movement by way of cultural changes in the attractiveness of maker spaces to nonmembers, strategic recruiting of new members, and greater infrastructural support by local communities. Looking at maker spaces themselves, we ask whether they might seek new sources of sponsorship, such as from corporations. We also wonder whether HEMI, the higher education maker spaces initiative, might lend a helping hand to at least the nonprofits.