digiproneurship: New types of physical products and sustainable employment from digital product entrepreneurship

The goal of the research reported in this paper was to define opportunities arising from combining advanced Information and Communication Technologies (aICT) with advanced Manufacturing and Materials (aMM). In particular, opportunities to improve the production times and costs of physical products which are person-specific, location-specific, and/or event-specific. This led to definition of opportunities for new types of physical products that are person-specific; location-specific; and/or event-specific; and that can transcend previously intractable trade-offs, such as person-specific fit / functionality versus production times and/or cost. Definition of new types of products led to definition of opportunities for new types of sustainable employment. In particular, sustainable employment arising from digitally-enabled distributed ideation, creation and/or propagation of new types of physical products. Such employment is sustainable because it involves reduced utilization of non-renewable resources. Moreover, this type of employment is sustainable because labour content is low, but multi-networking and technology content is high. Hence, such employment is not vulnerable to off-shoring. The new types of sustainable employment defined through the research can be established through entrepreneurship that leads to enterprises which offer physical products through digitally-enabled ideation, creation, and/or propagation. This new type of entrepreneurship can be referred to a digiproneurship (digital to physical product entrepreneurship). Such a term is necessary to distinguish the combining of aICT with aMM from the use of aICT in conventional digital entrepreneurship that is not concerned with the creation of physical products. It was recognized during the research that traditional entrepreneurship training would not be sufficient to enable digiproneurship. Accordingly, a training programme was formulated. Overall, the research shows how distributed ideation and propagation can be extended from the realm of digital products to the realm of physical products by introduction of distributed product creation that leads to the establishment of Factory 2.0 (i.e. Web 2.0 + highly distributed advanced manufacturing).