Almost eight years ago, I got the chance to help bootstrap amazon's development center in Bangalore. One of the things I did was go on a recruiting trip to the Indian School of Business - one of the premier business schools in India.
As an 'out of the box' thinking question, I asked all the candidates: "Imagine that 3D printers become cheap enough to be available in your corner store. How should Amazon react to take advantage of the new reality".
I posed it as a thought experiment; a sci-fi question that seemed completely futuristic.
And here we are today in 2012. The MakerBot Replicator 2 costs just under $2,200. That's about the same price as the early laser printers.
I also just heard Chris Anderson talk about his new book - "Makers - The New Industrial Revolution" at google today and it blew my mind.
We're there. In that crazy sci-fi future.
Some quotes and links from his talk:
Ronald Coase's Theory of the Firm
Autodesk123D
Thingaverse
Trimentional
Shapeways
Alibaba
Tinkercad
Lego Digital Designer
As an 'out of the box' thinking question, I asked all the candidates: "Imagine that 3D printers become cheap enough to be available in your corner store. How should Amazon react to take advantage of the new reality".
I posed it as a thought experiment; a sci-fi question that seemed completely futuristic.
And here we are today in 2012. The MakerBot Replicator 2 costs just under $2,200. That's about the same price as the early laser printers.
I also just heard Chris Anderson talk about his new book - "Makers - The New Industrial Revolution" at google today and it blew my mind.
We're there. In that crazy sci-fi future.
Some quotes and links from his talk:
The guy who runs techshop is the same guy that used to run kinkos
If you're a toy company, this should fill you with terror
Hiring today is not about talent optimization, but about access optimizationand some random links that I want to refer back to later
Ronald Coase's Theory of the Firm
Autodesk123D
Thingaverse
Trimentional
Shapeways
Alibaba
Tinkercad
Lego Digital Designer