Can small manufacturing labs, with the tools and computing power to make almost anything, infuse new ideas and possibilities into global solution networks and give a boost to local entrepreneurship and job creation? That's exactly what a network of "Fab Labs" is aspiring to do by providing access to powerful manufacturing tools-including laser cutters, milling machines, and 3-D printers-to an increasingly broad range of users at educational institutions and local community centers around the world. Incubated at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), the Fab Lab Network now consists of 270 independent manufacturing centers in 70 countries around the world.
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Michael Stacey (2014) studied this question.