Marketing Articles About Manufacturing Search Results

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6. It's Time For Open-Source Hardware. Open-source software has proven that users are sometimes the best designers with products like the Linux operating system and the Firefox browser. The next logical step is open-source hardware, a movement that is gaining ground in design circles. For instance, Chuck Messer at Tackle Design in Durham, North Carolina has developed an open-source jaundice light for developing countries using blue LEDs that can be manufactured for $75 (versus $3,000 to $5,000 for a similar piece of hospital equipment). And he is also involved with the Open Prosthetics Project, which is trying to bring back an updated version of the popular World War One-era Trautman Hook. Similarly, there are efforts to create open-source computers, cars, telephones, and 3-D printers. There is even a venture-backed company called Bug Labs trying to apply the concept to the commercial realm with what sounds liek open-source consumer electronics. As Fred Wilson, an investor in Bug Labs, cryptically puts it:The thing about Bug is that it's not anything like the iPhone. It's closer to Ning. It's all about what people will make with a Bug, not what a Bug is when it comes out of the box. The buzz around open-source hardware is just going to keep getting louder because it is an idea whose time has come. Bringing the culture of participation to physical products is a natural evolution of the open-source, DIY world we are now living in. What open-source hardware/products would make the most sense to build a business around? Comments are open.... (07/31/07 09:01 PM)

7. Disruptors Video: An eBay for Manufacturers (MFG.com). Remember all of those B2B exchanges that were supposed to change the industrial landscape before they evaporated at the tail end of the last dotcom boom? Well, at least one of them survived—a small company based in Atlanta called MFG.com. Today, it is a thriving Web marketplace for manufacturers and their suppliers. I talk with CEO Mitch Free in this week’s episode of the New Disruptors. MFG.com is a Website where engineers and purchasing managers from places like Apple or Northrop Grumman can put up CAD diagrams of parts they want manufactured and get bids from suppliers all over the world. In the past twelve months, over $2 billion worth of parts have been sourced over MFG.com. But instead of trying to take a cut of each transaction like eBay does, MFG.com charges a subscription fee of about $6,000 a year to each supplier. Free says the company is on track to pull in $25 million in revenues this year and is running at break-even. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the largest outside investor (he learned about it from one of the engineers at his spacecraft startup, Blue Origin). Germany’s Samwer brothers—their startup Alando became eBay Germany—also own a stake. Free wants to turn MFG.com into an online platform for the manufacturing industry. Last year, he bought Europe’s SourcingParts (a Salesforce.com for purchasing managers), and launched a manufacturing social network last March called MFGx.com. “We’ve borrowed some of the elements from Craigslist, MySpace, and Wikipedia,” he says. But perhaps the... (07/26/07 09:00 PM)

8. The New Disruptors, Now On iTunes. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I've been putting out a lot of videos lately. It's all part of a new Web video series I am producing on CNNMoney.com called The New Disruptors. Each week, I will profile a different disruptive startup or entrepreneur in a three-minute video. In the current episode, for instance, I visit Desktop Factory, a company in LA that wants to bring 3D, rapid-prototyping printers to the masses. Future episodes will feature entrepreneurs taking on industries as diverse as the airlines, energy, healthcare, media, manufacturing, and wireless. A new video will go up every Thursday on CNNMoney.com. You can also subscribe to the show for free via an RSS feed or, as of a week ago, get it on iTunes. (When I last checked this morning, it was the No. 15 business podcast on iTunes, neck-and-neck with Wallstrip). If you do download it from iTunes, please write a review there telling me what you think (or in comments below). All you folks who just bought an iPhone need to fill it up with free videos, don't you? For every episode, I will also do a blog post. (Advertisers interested in sponsoring the show, please contact cnnmoneysales@timeinc.com).... (07/10/07 09:01 PM)

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