Abstract
Abstract ‘Openness’ is one of the key concepts brought forward by postindustrial narratives questioning the modern repartition of roles between industries and customers. In these narratives, citizen participation in design and intellectual property management based on open source principles are the promise of more sustainable production models. In this context, openness in product design and development has been the object of growing interest and experimentation from academia, businesses and grassroots communities. As a result, numerous concepts emerged that attempt to grasp the essence of this phenomenon, unfortunately leading to overlapping, conflicting or speculative depictions. In this article, we share the understanding we gained throughout 6 years of research on Open Design and Open Source Hardware and attempt to make the difference between myths and facts. We depict an enthusiastic but realistic picture of Open Design and Open Source Hardware practices as we could observe them and deliver a structured framework to situate concepts and their differences. From this, we share seven observations leading to seven corresponding research questions and establish a research agenda to stimulate further investigations into this socially relevant and potentially ground-breaking phenomenon.
Highlights
We approach these challenges by focussing on the crossroads between Open Design and Open Source Hardware, a phenomenon we term in this article Open Source Product Development and define as the development of Open Source Hardware products performed in a collective process allowing the participation of any interested person
The Open Source Hardware Statement of Principles 1.0 maintained by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) defines Open Source Hardware as ‘hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or hardware based on that design’ (Open Source Hardware Association 2016)
Open Source Product Development’ (OSPD) projects mentioned in literature showed successes in development of early concepts and or functioning prototypes, but only few projects reach manufactureready designs that are introduced in the market, if at all
Summary
Recent trends in technology and society supported the emergence of alternative narratives challenging the central role traditionally played by the firm in product creation and innovation. Interesting in the context of the Design Science Journal and the thematic collection ‘Open Design and Open Source Hardware Product Development’ the authors are co-editing is the question, how far new design practices gathered under the label Open Design challenge available descriptive theories of design and established prescriptive design methods. We approach these challenges by focussing on the crossroads between Open Design and Open Source Hardware, a phenomenon we term in this article Open Source Product Development and define as the development of Open Source Hardware products performed in a collective process allowing the participation of any interested person. Recommendations for research and policy making to support the further development of Open Design practices
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