Ponoko - A co-creation manufacturing company

by Tom | Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 2:06 pm | One response.

Categories: Co-creation, Open source.

Ponoke is a new company that launched during at Techcrunch 40, a tech-based conference.

Ponoke is selling itself as a 'personal manufacturing platform'. What this essentially means is that Ponoko is an enabler company. It enables people and companies, from a range of disciplines and backgrounds to get together to brainstorm, prototype, build and sell products.

At the heart of their proposition is the utilisation on-demand manufacturing techniques, which they hope can be localised to consumer demand.
It works because it cuts out the middle man (if you exclude Ponoko itself). This means people and groups and companies can reduce the costs to their consumer while maintaining full control over their product(s).

The Ponoko 'big idea' explained

Why I blog this
Just like Lulu, Createspace and Threadless (to name a few) Ponoko is in the business of providing the means to make niche and co-collaborated ideas real.

These companies are advancing the collaborative concepts, initially forged in the Open-source movement by moving them into the world of real, tangible product development and production. At the same time, through good use of language and understanding of user-behaviours, they are pushing the boundaries of what individuals of varying disciplines can achieve and produce.

Another thing we really like is that Ponoko are practicing what they preach. It's early days for Ponoko. To build up momentum, they need to source a network of manufacturers across globe. To do this they are looking to their audience for help, asking them to refer suitable companies who can get involved.

We think it's only a matter of time before the first user-generated, collaboratively produced, real-world product becomes a run away success. After all Firefox, the open-source browser has proved that it's possible in the digital sector.
sourced via techcrunch, the gong show,