Collaborative Spaces at Work

6 Makers or breakers?

Shared fabrication spaces as a double-edged sword for entrepreneurship

Alina Grenier-Arellano and Yuval Engel

Introduction

Both theory and conventional wisdom promote the idea that lower barriers to entrepreneurial entry (e.g., access to knowledge, resources, technology, and markets) can trigger creative entrepreneurial activity (Eesley, 2016; Perry‐Smith & Coff, 2011). Thus, the emergence of the “Maker-Movement” – a growing community of creative innovators democratizing the means of production through open access to Shared Fabrication Spaces (SFSs) – is credited with ushering a new industrial revolution and as a powerful enabler of entrepreneurial creativity (Browder et al., 2019).

SFSs – physical community workshops ...