Oakland Fab City Innovation Center - 2019 Final Report & Findings

Oakland Fab City Innovation
Center
Final Report and Findings

INTRODUCTION
Thanks to a generous grant provided by the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation, the
Oakland Fab City team was able to conduct some exploratory work to support the
development of the Oakland Fab City Innovation Center (FCIC). That work spanned
three major areas:
- Travel to comparable US sites
- Exploration of local sites and partnerships
- Vision development for Oakland FCIC
And led us to some compelling conclusions:
ManufacturingInnovationCentersareverydifferentfromtechincubators
Software, when scaling, has very low marginal cost. Physical goods are different. They
must be dug from the ground or grown in the sun, and processed in various ways. This

means the movement and storage of significant quantities of material is a given when
thinking about any sort of fabrication or manufacturing process. Even in a future world
where more raw materials can be reclaimed, or grown on rooftops and farmed in very
efficient ways, and where mineral and petroleum extraction and processing play a
smaller role in how we make things, making things is still necessary. Fab City cannot
ignore this reality and the comparative disadvantage for manufacturing enterprise as
compared to pure software development..
Manufacturing businesses scale less efficiently, and incur step factors in cost and risk
at various points in the life cycle of product development and scaling. These are
inherent to their very business model. As a result, capital returns often take longer to
produce and produce lower multiples compared to software development.In order for
these businesses to reach market, and to scale, they need more capital, more time,
and more space at their disposal.
ExistingManufacturingSystemcreatesbarrierstoinnovation
The early 21st century manufacturing supply chain is based on the assumption that
manufacturing will continue to grow where land and people are cheapest: in
developing countries.. This has led, over the last generation, to the emergence of
highly sophisticated manufacturing centers in Asia, and increasingly in Africa. These
21st century centers have key benefits that make them hard to compete against:
Tremendous scale of production - the large firms (and collections of small ones) are
significant customers of raw materials, and can influence the price of commodities,
their production methods, and the materials which will be in demand in current and
future manufacturing cycles. It also means that these firms can put significant energy
into development of talent, facilities, and intellectual property. And, in the end, it
means they can drive marginal costs lower, invest in customer acquisition and service,
and defend their market position.
Low cost of land and labor - especially when compared to the ridiculously high costs
of both of these items in the Bay Area, the costs of real estate, commercial leases, and
construction are orders of magnitude lower. Labor costs, even as wages increase
around large manufacturing centers, are still much lower than here. This advantage
means that shipping, communications barriers, time zone differences, and the
complexity they create for global businesses, are often worth the trade off.
2019 Oakland Fab City Innovation Center Study
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Both of these sets of factors lead to increasing concentration of capital, wealth,
productivity and power, which tend to inhibit innovation. The additional risk of
intellectual property leakage and theft are more acute risks for emerging companies,
since they are practically unable to defend their IP rights, especially when the defense
needs to be conducted halfway around the world.
These centers didn’t spring up on their own, however. They benefited from
tremendous investment on the part of their governments, who were able to add
credibility for the large manufacturers who would become their best customers.
To rebuild local innovation, we must create the conditions where it will thrive: smart
people, risk mitigation, and investment. In Oakland, we do not have the benefit of large
firms which develop talent, and whose employees eventually find ways to pursue
entrepreneurship. We must find other strategies.
MeetOakland’sneedstoday,createmomentumforfuturegrowth
The Bay Area climate of entrepreneurship is a strong pull for many individuals, and
there is still a significant segment of our local population who identify as ‘makers’, an
imperfect term that spans everything from great cooks to hardware engineers and
everything between. No one facility can contain all these activities.
We believe the Oakland Fab City Innovation Center should focus on a few goals:
- Attracting the best ideas from local teams and individuals - those ideas which
can power a business, employ local workers, and create local economic activity
- Building and constantly improving the scaffolding which helps these ideas reach
market and scale
- Attracting and developing the people who will fill in the gaps in all these
enterprises: the engineers, sales and marketing people, operations experts,
back office professionals, etc.
By doing this well, we play an important role in the emergence of a manufacturing
economy made up of firms which become customers and suppliers to each other, who
invest in people and ideas, and ensure that Oakland continues to play a part in
innovation.
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The risk of not doing this is clear: innovation will continue to be done for us, and for the
benefit of others. The Amazons, Apples, and Googles of the world will do great things,
but also continue to create damage to the economic and social fabric of our city.
Conclusions
It is clear that certain cities have been able to establish productive place-based
strategies to increase the pace and impact of innovation. A few of these are integrated
to varying extents with impact-oriented education, training and entrepreneurship
programming. This is exemplary of Fab City systemic integration. These efforts are
largely being conducted outside of FabLabs, and there is minimal crossover between
the network of FabLabs and other endeavors focused on commercialization.
Here in the Bay Area, there are some facilities which include digital fabrication and
services for businesses. Some of these (Highway 1, Playground Global) are true
business incubators, where founders trade equity for discounted services or support.
As such, these facilities are exclusive, and produce only businesses which are pursuing
products of a certain scale. Others are education-focused. These include FabLabs at
Laney, College of Alameda, Castlemont and Skyline High Schools, and other
educational facilities and organizations like the Jacobs Center for Innovation at UC
Berkeley, Lighthouse Charter School, the Bay Area Discovery Museum, among others.
More recently, HumanMade has opened its doors in San Francisco, focused on helping
individuals acquire skills in digital design and fabrication.
There are many gaps which can be filled by efforts to expand existing Fab Lab capacity
and programming, and clear opportunity for new place-based facilities which focus on
supporting the emerging manufacturers in our area, while maintaining dialog and
resource sharing with other nodes in this network. As for Fab City generally,
communication and referrals between sites and programs is necessary, and providing
resources to continue and expand this effort is important.
Our recommendations:
- Continue to pursue the creation of a new Oakland Innovation Center for Fab
City. This will require further partnerships with anchor tenants, finance and real
estate. This project is a commercially viable commercial real estate
development project.
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- Support communication between existing FabLabs and other obvious partners,
including some of the above. This will require funding to engage individuals
skilled in this work.
As we continue to build our own Oakland Innovation Center, we recognize that our
leadership and developing this community of commercially minded people from a
diverse community is the challenge that we must rise to. Our community must
recognize its limits, and develop the right partnerships. To be clear, when we speak
about diversity in this way, we recognize the need for broad representation for the
success of Fab City and for our Innovation Center. We need to speak effectively to our
partners, community stakeholders, and our varied membership. We need to run a
business and not expect subsidy and philanthropy as our business model. This allows
us to help others do the same - we eat our own dog food.
This vision is robust, and fits into Oakland in a way that the sites we visited in other
cities do not.
We need this particular kind of Innovation Center in Oakland.
We are dedicated to this vision.
Sal Bednarz,
Oakland Fab City
HOWOTHERCITIESDOTHISWORK,ANDDOITWELL
This is a long report, and needed to be. We accomplished so much in a short time with
few resources. We have created relationships with smart, creative, and dedicated
people in all the cities we visited. The spaces we saw inspired us, but in general, the
spaces are eclipsed by the people in them.
The staff of each of these sites, as a collection of individuals, shares some common
traits:
- Understanding and insights about the needs of their members and the
ecosystem they inhabit
- Creativity and optimism - the ability to show us how their vision would progress
and grow, and how the constant problems they solve are worth the effort
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- Dedication - the passion and energy of leadership in these spaces is apparent.
Community and partnership building take a certain kind of indefatigable
patience, and the ability to show others both that the work is hard, and that it’s
worth it
Because of these common traits, they have been able to carve out recognition for
themselves and their member communities. Actually, the particular superpower on
display here is to be able to do this primarily for the benefit of those members. There
are many failure stories littering the highway of incubators, makerspaces, coworking
spaces, and charter schools. Those that we visited have largely made it past those
points of failure because of this symbiotic relationship between facility and member.
OAKLANDFABCITYTRAVELITINERARY
We were able to send representatives from Oakland Fab City to several cities over the
course of 2019. Cities and sites visited are listed below.
Sacramento ● Hacker Lab
● Sacramento City College Makerspace
Chicago ● ICCC Incubator
● Fablab at Museum of Science & Industry
● mHub
● The Plant
● [Fablab / accelerator at U Chicago]
● Fablab at Harold Washington Public Library
● YouMedia at Harold Washington Public Library
Detroit ● ISAIC
● Chicago School of Design
● Shinola factory
● Incite Focus Fablab
● Tech Town
● Argonaut Building
● True North & Core City
San Diego ● High Tech High
Los Angeles ● LA Cleantech Incubator (LACI)
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Boston,
Cambridge,
Somerville
● CiC Boston
● Artisans Asylum
● Greentown Labs
● The Engine
● BUILD at Boston University
● Make Possible / The Possible Project
Providence, RI ● Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at The Met HS
BOLD CITIES: current Fab Cities . BOLD ITALIC SITES: registered Fablabs

These cities and the sites and people we visited in them were selected for various
reasons:
- Current Fab City membership
- Innovative approaches to incubation/acceleration of manufacturing businesses
- Similar demographics to Oakland (Detroit, Chicago - south side, Providence)
- Industrial history - Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Somerville
- Innovative K-12 schools (specifically targeting schools which include
entrepreneurship support for students, and robust interaction between students
and the greated community)
See the following table. Note that this is not an exhaustive matrix - this criteria was
solely used to identify which cities to prioritize in our travels.
Fab City Innovative
Support for
Manufacturers
Similar
Demographics
to Oakland
Industrial
Legacy
Innovative
K-12 schools
Sacramento X
Chicago X X X
Detroit X X X X
San Diego X
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Los Angeles X
Boston,
Cambridge,
Somerville
X X X X
Providence,
RI
X

We selected sites using a combination of web research and referrals. We made
contacts in advance of each visit whenever possible, and in some cases were able to
arrange for a local guide to accompany us. Our time was short in each city, sometimes
restricted to just a few hours. As a result of this coordination and the visits themselves,
we have established dialog with representatives in each city which will serve us in
ongoing Fab City efforts.

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TRIP #1

SACRAMENTO

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SACRAMENTO-OURSISTERFABCITY
Sacramento is a short 90 minute drive from Oakland, but is a very different city. Its role
as capital city of California, and its
location in California’s agricultural
Central Valley mean that it doesn’t
leap to mind as a hotbed of
manufacturing innovation. In fact, one
of the reasons for the emergence of
some of the facilities below is a
recognition that eroding skills in
design and manufacturing need
educational support. Much of the Fab
City movement in Sacramento is
related in some way to education (as is
much of the Fab City activity in
Oakland).
But, as in all cities, innovation
happens. Sacramento State University
and private spaces like Hacker Lab
started working in this space several
years ago, mostly focused on
emerging software businesses. This
work led increasingly toward digital
design and fabrication, which exists at
the intersection of technology and
materials.
[Right: a Sacramento area innovation
ecosystem diagram courtesy of
StartupSAC]

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HackerLab
Started as a software incubator, and ran a coworking space without any workshop
facilities for several years. A not-insignificant
portion of their membership was made up of
students graduating from local colleges and
working on startups.
Hacker Lab was approached by the Sierra
Community College District, which was seeking a
partner to host fabrication equipment and
support students who were interested in
pursuing careers in design and fabrication. This
partnership helped Hacker Lab grow - they now
inhabit four locations across the greater
Sacramento area, and boast over 700 active
members. Student memberships are subsidized by
the Community College District. Hacker Lab also
takes economic development grant funds (from
City, County, and State) to provide skills training,
research, and other functions.
We visited the Rocklin location of Hacker Lab,
across the street from Sierra College. This location
includes a classroom for Sierra students, and class
programming which complements the Sierra
curriculum for students learning CAD/CAM,
machining, 3D printing, laser cutting, welding,
woodworking, and other fabrication techniques.
This location is situated in a disused strip mall,
and it has found low-cost ways to use this
space to support its members.

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Hacker Lab offers floating coworking memberships, which include access to their
onsite equipment.
Safety and skills classes are regularly offered on various equipment, and are required
for members to enable access to each piece of machinery. Classes are heavily
discounted for members, but are open to the general public. Hacker Lab hosts over
100 classes each month across their locations.
In addition to general coworking / floating makerspace memberships, Hacker Lab
offers dedicated spaces, both offices for clean use, and cages for storage and to host
private member workspace for
equipment and tools. Office hours with
makerspace mentors are available for a
small fee. Hacker Lab has launched a
business development and incubation
program specifically tailored to
emerging design and manufacturing
businesses. This program is built on
their learnings providing business
acceleration support to software
businesses.
Hacker Lab is HQ for Sacramento Fab
City programs. Unfortunately, these
programs haven’t gotten much traction.
In general, Hacker Lab leadership has found that existing organizations working in
workforce training and economic development don’t recognize any benefit from
signing on to the Fab City program. Hacker Lab staff has plenty to do with running its
general operation, and doesn’t have capacity to establish or manage a Fab City agenda.
The stand-out for us:
The combination of publicly funded research and consulting, contracting to education
institutions, and managing inhouse member-facing services, is a mix that has led to the
growth of Hacker Lab to multiple sites in Sacramento.

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SacramentoCityCollegeMakerspace
We visited the Makerspace at Sacramento City College when it was less than a year
old. We were struck by two things: 1) its great design, and 2) the amount of activity
happening inside. Director Tom Cappelletti came to education with a background in
design - both inhouse and through running his own small design agency. He’s also a
charismatic leader, and clearly has the trust of the SCC administration. He has been
able to secure funding for space, equipment, and a sizeable staff. At the time of our
visit, he had a roster of about 20 paid student assistants in addition to a small full-time
team.
We spent about an hour in the space, and during that time, saw multiple groups of
students being toured through the space, as
well as several individuals working on
projects. Over 1,000 students were making
use of the Makerspace on a regular basis, and
many more were intermittent users.
Tom was developing a small design and
fabrication agency for off-campus customers,
and using operating profit from this activity to
fund other parts of the operation. This was in
its infancy when we visited, but Tom’s hope
was that this would provide a meaningful
revenue stream, and regular opportunity for
students to work on actual client projects.

The Makerspace hosts several classes a day,
available for free for all SCC students. These
are general safety and basic skills, and also meetup style workshops where students
and staff work together in groups. The Makerspace and SCC has made a priority of
internal marketing to students and faculty to raise awareness of the space and its
offers.
SCC is part of the Los Rios Community College District, which also includes the Folsom
Lake College. Folsom Lake is home to another makerspace in the district, and the
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leadership of the SCC and Folsom Lake makerspaces are actively working to develop
and teach a coordinated ‘Maker’ curriculum, using makerspaces and FabLabs as the
platforms to deliver compelling learning. Their hope is that this curriculum will be
adopted by other schools, and eventually by the entire California Community College
system.
Tom Cappelletti's visionary leadership has allowed him to get allocations of significant
resources (staff and dollars) that many facilities can only dream about. He credits this
to his ability to sell his vision to other stakeholders at the school, and to get them
excited about the work that is happening in the Makerspace. His design background
has led to a really visually impressive space, and we saw that reflected in the
excitement of visitors touring the space for the first time.

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TRIP #2

CHICAGO & DETROIT
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CHICAGO
[excerpted from the Oakland Fab City blog, and edited for this report]
We engaged in a three-day, two-city tour of Chicago and Detroit design and
manufacturing sites. We had a team of
five of us on the road: Sal Bednarz and
Aakash Desai from Fab City staff, Philip
Arca from the Fab City advisory board,
and Nora Jendoubi and Derwin Sisnett of
Maslow Development (Memphis).
The Maslow team came to visit us in
Oakland a few months before the trip -
they had been visiting makerspaces and
other sites across the country to support
a community co-designed development
in Memphis, centered around a high
school and makerspace. Their Lighthouse Project is a mixed-use development
including a K-12 school, mixed-income housing, health & wellness facilities, and
workforce development opportunities, including makerspace to enable exploration of
design and manufacturing.
Chicago was a priority for us because we saw in our research a variety of specialized
spaces serving their various member/customer/client communities in different ways.
There is no central planning involved. Public policy plays a role, but not a primary one.
There is a mix of sustainable for-profit, and publicly funded programming. These two
spheres often exist together at a single site.
No single site can be everything to everyone, and the sites we visited are successful
because they understand where in the larger manufacturing ecosystem they fit. We
found that many of the people we visited knew others on our itinerary, and some were
actively collaborating with each other, understanding that, while serving the same
communities, they often don’t really compete with each other in a direct way, and that
by coordinating, they are able to do more and serve those they serve even better.
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In Chicago, this seemed like the organic framework on which to build a really exciting
Fab City program. In Oakland and the Bay Area, our manufacturing communities tend
to be much more diffuse, and not served in the direct and effective ways many of the
programs below do, supporting their sector-specific needs and helping them form
professional networks with others like them.
DETROIT
Detroit is one of five other US Fab Cities, and the Incite
Focus FabLab is a parent lab to our Elevator Works site.
Still recovering from the collapse of its auto
manufacturing industry in the 80s and 90s, Detroit is
reinventing itself. Manufacturing is in its bones and its
blood, and its depleted condition has given many a
sense of much to gain and little to lose. Experiments
happen; risks are taken. And now, several years into this
new chapter, really interesting innovation clusters are
emerging. A new textile and apparel industry is growing,
supported by key industry partners, great education, and
support for emerging designers and producers.
This trip left us all incredibly energized. We made new relationships with these great
programs, and helped in a small way to connect them to each other. So many of the
people we met with were so generous with their time and energy. We clearly owe a
debt to pay this forward as we continue our work, and to return the favor to those folks
and their communities when they visit us here in Oakland.
We visited a range of sites, from educational to industrial, for-profit and nonprofit, food
and non-food. Every one of them informed our work in a unique way.

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Chicago - ICNC Make City Incubator
The Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago is
an economic development organization with
a 50-plus-year legacy. It started as a
collaboration of factory businesses in what
has become the Kinzie Inustrial Corridor. It
acquired 416,000 square feet of industrial
buildings in this corridor, in which it launched
a manufacturing incubator in 1980. On the
day we visited, the Chicago City Council
approved the extension of the Kinzie Corridor,
preserving and expanding the industrial
zoning of this area and protecting it from a
boom in condo and apartment conversions of these buildings in surrounding
neighborhoods.
A silk screening company in the incubator services many of the other tenants branded
apparel needs. This company will likely be replaced by another apparel company when
it outgrows this space
Make City is supporting the emergence and growth
of traditional small food and non-food
manufacturing. The program includes an onsite
SBDC (Small Business Development Center), an
International Trade Center, and a workforce
training program to serve member companies. It’s
staff delivers a hard-to-pin-down secret sauce,
making incubator companies feel connected and
capable.
It has over 100 incubator businesses in its facility, inhabiting spaces ranging from
several hundred to a few thousand square feet. Companies generally have a three-year
lifespan in the Incubator. The vast majority outgrow the space and move on to larger
facilities elsewhere.
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There’s another relevant ICNC program that we didn’t get a chance to visit on this trip -
The Hatchery is a growth-stage food incubator founded in partnership with Accion
Chicago, which started inside the Make City building but recently moved into its own
space. It’s got 54 available small kitchens for companies to rent, and has support
programming in place to support the sector-specific needs of food manufacturing.
Visible network effects, with many businesses buying products and services from each
other, and promoting each other’s offerings.

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Chicago - Fablab at Museum of Science & Industry
This museum is big in every way, and its FabLab
programs are big, ambitious, and fruitful. The MSI
team is a charming group of engineering and design
nerds who have found a great home and are making
incredible impact in education and community
development in the South Side of Chicago.
They have staked out a three-mile radius around
their South Side location, and are providing services to
all 17 public high schools in this circle. They offer a
professional development program for teachers,
hold regular convenings for educators in the
region, and provide equipment to those schools
to launch mini-FabLabs. The team is constantly
researching low-cost digital fabrication
equipment, and have adopted an evolving
specification for a startup FabLab for less than
$7,000. This works because the MSI FabLab is
able to provide services to teachers and schools
to ensure they know how to use and maintain
equipment. By taking this approach, they are
able to cut the cost of building a FabLab by more
than 90%.
The MSI FabLab youth program serves 100% youth of color from the South Side of
Chicago.
Their flexible self-directed learning and qualification framework based on colored
martial arts-style ‘belts’; also their refinement of super-low-cost FabLabs for area
public schools, and their support for nearby educators. (Actually, a lot more things
stood out, but this needs to be a short message...see for yourself.)

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Chicago - mHub
mHub is laser-focused on creating the best possible
conditions for high-growth hardware companies to
start and grow. Their workshop is equipped to the gills
with really capable equipment, and their relationships
with services companies to help members do hard
things is a strong enabler.
We visited on a pitch night and saw one of their
member companies working to raise capital to
grow their gps tracking service for kids. mHub
is the sort of place that it’s easy to see
high-growth companies getting the support
they need to grow. Members and staff are
clearly sensitive about the needs to protect IP
of their members. We weren’t allowed to take
photos of the space, and some areas (like an
IOT research lab belonging to Accenture) were
off limits to visitors.
mHub’s relationships with large industry
partners and with university tech
transfer/incubation programs who have taken space in their facility.

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Chicago - The Plant
The Plant is about plants, and food, and
fermentation. They have literally
plumbed tenants to each other,
delivering waste product from one
project as a raw material input to
another. Their collection of food,
farming, fermentation and research
tenants are clearly in great company
with each other, and with The Plant’s
team, who is building an awesome
facility for and around them.

Inexpensive and beautiful design elements like this
planter/light fixture made from bare conduit and old
smoker chimney parts are everywhere in the building
The building is the second major project undertaken
by Bubbly Dynamics, a for-profit real estate
development firm. Their first building is in the
Nearwest neighborhood, adjacent to ICNC’s Make
City incubator. It’s known simply as Bubbly, and is a
light-industrial business incubator that's home to
small and emerging manufacturers, product
assemblers, and community maker spaces.
Bubbly Dynamics conceived this new project to serve the food manufacturing
companies they saw that needed a unique kind of industrial space. Incidentally,
several of their tenants are or have been members of ICNC’s Hatchery program.
The site of a former meatpacking and meat smoking plant, The Plant certainly conveys
a feeling of evolving from our meat-heavy past into our plant-driven future. The
businesses inside are doing everything from indoor and outdoor farming, beekeeping,
algae research, brewing, craft ice, social enterprise based on Afghan saffron, and much
more.
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The Plant feels really rooted in the history of its building and the surrounding
neighborhood. Interior design does an incredible job of preserving and repurposing the
meatpacking bones of the facility. Conference rooms are located behind old smoker
doors. Sheet metal chimneys become planters. Old soot-stained walls are part of the
backdrop for all that happens in the building today. Their Packingtown Museum is a
learning and event space that documents this history.
Also, they’re working hard to close a financing gap to complete installation of a huge
biodigester on their site which will turn food waste into biogas as well as liquid and
solid byproducts that can serve as inputs for other Plant tenants.

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Chicago - Polsky Exchange
The Polsky Exchange is a program of the University of
Chicago. It includes heavily subsidized coworking in a
beautiful building for community members, and a
12-month cross-sector business incubator program.
It’s located in a commercial district just off the
University of Chicago campus, and just a few blocks
from its Booth School of Business.
Incubator companies include pure tech, consumer and
b2b hardware, consumer and professional services, and
more. The Exchange boasts membership of over 3,000,
and has provided service to thousands of companies.
The onsite Tech Bar at Polsky Exchange serves as a
more convenient and lower cost alternative to the
Genius Bar or Geek Squad for students, faculty and
members
The Polsky Exchange includes a Fabrication Lab, with
trained staff providing free service to members working
in digital design and fabrication. The Lab has been a resource for some of the incubator
companies, as well as to students & faculty, and community coworking subscribers.
The architecture of the Polsky building is striking - well-lit, colorful, airy, and full of
workers.
We felt immediately welcomed in this space - Polsky members smiled at us. Their
Director brought us chairs from his office. This is no small thing, and is supported by
architectural design features, and a team which obviously emphasizes this in their
culture. Thanks for the warm experience!

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Chicago - Idea Shop and Ed Kaplan Innovation Center at
Illinois Institute of Technology
IIT is a rarefied place that turns out world-class
designers and architects. The Idea Shop is a makerspace
located in the IIT Innovation Center, open to students
and faculty. Their building is high-tech, highly
experimental, and has made a dramatic impact on its
inhabitants.

IdeaShop is a makerspace open
to students and faculty of IIT. It
isn’t open to the public. It’s
well-equipped, and has staff that
can clearly help others learn to
use its equipment and get their
projects made. It was an active
space, with people coming and
going constantly while we were in
the space. (This was hard not to
notice, because of the
motion-activated voice prompt to
swipe badges on entry and exit of
the space.)
The larger Ed Kaplan Innovation
Center is an event space with
open floor plan student
workstations. It’s set up like an actual design studio - students and faculty all have
assigned desks inside the gleaming white facility.
The Innovation Center building really felt like a huge working design studio, and the
evidence of design and collaboration were everywhere.
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Chicago - Harold Washington Public
Library - Maker Lab and YouMedia
We went to visit the main branch of the Chicago Public
Library to see its Maker Lab, which is on the third floor of
the library building. The Maker Lab is a small space, and
has a small staff that help library patrons with digital
design and fabrication projects. It has laser cutters, 3d
printers, vinyl cutters, sewing machines - what you’d
expect.
We thought we’d have a quick tour of the Maker Lab
and wind down our day. Instead, staff suggested we
check out the Youmedia space on the ground floor of
the library. “It’s a space for youth, and they have
some 3d printers and stuff down there", they said.
We headed downstairs to Youmedia, not at all
prepared for what we found. Youmedia is a
mind-bending program, centered around creating safe
space for young people inside a public library. It was
loud, active and full of youthful energy in a way that
very few spaces are. The program includes music
production and recording equipment, digital
fabrication and sewing, 2d and 3d design, student
group projects, video games. Also, there were books.
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The librarians at Youmedia (yes, they’re librarians!), walked us through the space and
shared their philosophy: by providing a safe space for youth and filling it with
opportunities for those young people to explore and create, they’ve seen that that’s
what actually happens. Some of the users of the space are content to hang out and
battle each other in Smash Bros, but we saw several working on creative projects. They
were composing and recording music, sewing, working on digital illustrations, cutting
vinyl and wood, making 3d prints. They were collaborating. Some of the young people
had become experts, who helped others navigate machines, technology, and the
space.
Young people, given the opportunity to create in an energizing space, were doing so,
and doing it their way. There was no pressure for visitors to do anything they didn’t
want to do, and many were using their time to experiment, create, and learn.

- 27 -

Detroit - Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center
ISAIC is a skills and job training program and an industrial
incubator fueled by a contract sewing/textiles microfactory
and industry customers. It has a hybrid
commercial/non-profit operating model, which enables
ownership by ISAIC worker-members. They are further
enabled by tight coordination with the fashion design and
manufacturing program at the nearby College for Creative
Studies and relationships with local manufacturers including
Shinola and Carhartt.

The core of the ISAIC machine is their contract
manufacturing floor, which is being built out to service
large manufacturing runs for customers throughout
the region and beyond. The constant need in this
factory for trained workers provides the opportunity to
train new workers who might be starting with literally
no design or sewing experience. Augmented by
designers and sewers graduating from the nearby
College for Creative Studies, this platform provides the
workforce basis to recruit other larger manufacturers.
This helps seed a burgeoning textiles industry
ecosystem which allows companies like Carhartt
rehome their offshored production.
The production floor at ISAIC will be designed and operated based on the team’s
learnings building and operating the Shinola factory floor. They have developed a
worker-centric operating model which is unusual in the textile industry - the opposite
of a traditional ‘sweatshop’.
- 28 -

Freelancers and small shops locating in the same building create additional demand
for the contract manufacturing plant when they take orders that they cannot service on
their own. This enables these very small companies to rapidly flex their operation while
reducing risk - their manufacturing is still onsite, and almost inhouse, but doesn’t
require these tiny firms to raise capital, buy equipment, build out factories, and hire
workers in order to grow.
ISAIC is undergoing their buildout now, and will launch soon.
Jennifer Guarino, ISAIC’s CEO, is a superconnector and has the network, skills,
confidence and charisma to pull this ambitious program off. We saw this reflected in
the reactions that others had to her as she toured us not just around the ISAIC site, but
many others nearby. Jennifer - please let us repay your generous hospitality when
you’re in the Bay Area!

- 29 -

Detroit - Argonaut Building / A Alfred Taubman Center for
Design Education
This building is home to several tenants, including the
College for Creative Studies, the School for Creative
Studies, a charter Middle and High School focused on arts
and design, and the Shinola factory and offices. The
building and surrounding ones also include hundreds of
units student housing for the College and nearby Wayne
State University.

The Argonaut Building was built in the 1930s by General Motors to house its internal
R&D programs. Lots of cars were designed here until the early 2000s. General Motors
donated the building to the College for Creative
Studies in 2007, and it was re-christened the A
Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education. CCS
moved its undergraduate design programs to the
building, and launched new graduate programs in
the new facility. CCS continues to turn out world
class automotive designers, in addition to its other
programs.
CCS also operates a charter Middle School and
High School for art and design students. Many of
them stay on for the CCS college curriculum.
We visited the CCS Fashion and Footwear
program, and met faculty & students. They have a wide range of specialized sewing
equipment, along with modern touches like a CNC leather cutting machine that
projects patterns onto the vacuum cutting table to enable the operator to align the
leather to the pattern to avoid imperfections.
- 30 -

We also toured the Shinola factory and offices, and saw firsthand their sewing floor,
which was really not very different from the CCS classroom in terms of its equipment
and layout. It was easy to imagine learning in one space and making the transition to
design or create in the other.
The stand out for us:
Movement of people between school and industry through internships and projects
happening in the same building. The ground floor cafeteria is a space where all of these
people - students, professionals, and others from the surrounding neighborhood -
come together in unexpected ways. Also, the College’s evident mission to train fashion
students in not just design, but actual manufacturing. This happens in a way that
enables them to move on in their careers as adaptable professionals and effective
freelancers and entrepreneurs - those who start business or make manufacturing
decisions are more likely to keep those operations inhouse instead of immediately
defaulting to outsourcing.

- 31 -

Detroit - Incite Focus
Incite Focus is the seat of Detroit Fab City activities. A
FabLab which has been rooted in the Detroit community for
years, it has served hundreds of young people through
hands-on education programs. Incite Focus recently located
into a new location in partnership with Wayne State
University, and is now smack-dab in the middle of a vibrant
innovation cluster. It’s working to refactor its programs and
offerings to grow its impact and become an enabler for
community partnerships and emerging designers and
fabricators.

We happened to be visiting during a time
that Incite Focus had paused its community
open hours, which normally happen every
afternoon. These have been so
well-attended that the FabLab team has
been unable to keep up with its internal
projects and do some maintenance in its
new space. (Great problems, as they say!)
As with other FabLabs, the Incite Focus staff
has a passion and creativity that is
infectious. We’re sorry we weren’t able to
see that passion rubbing off on community
members during their open hours, but glad
we got to see the team hard at work creating
and able to really open up about the process
of reimagining themselves.

- 32 -

Detroit - TechTown
A nonprofit coworking space and business
incubator/accelerator, TechTown is home to hundreds
of members, dozens of orgs and companies, and a
service center serving hundreds of area emerging
businesses. TechTown is not manufacturing-focused,
but is part of the vibrant innovation district that includes
all the above Detroit sites, and many of its members are
emerging manufacturers and designers.

In the TechTown building, there are offices and lab
spaces available for rent, for businesses who
outgrow open-plan coworking and need their own
dedicated space.
TechTown has an unusual mix of support for tech
startups and neighborhood small businesses under
one roof. This leads to interesting network effects
achieved through physical proximity. We saw a
coding boot camp company, a tutoring service for
high school students in areas like aerospace
engineering, alongside clothing designers and food producers.
The diversity (ethnic, racial, gender, age) of members in coworking space, and the
sheer number of activities being served out of the building. On the day we visited, we
saw a pop-up retail market, a happy hour reception in the public plaza outside, and lots
of smiling members buzzing around the ground floor coworking space - this didn’t
seem like an unusual day for the TechTown team.

- 33 -

Detroit - True North & Core City
Cheap real estate in Detroit is an enabler for
emerging creative and manufacturing
businesses. Core City is a petri dish of
innovative live-work, retail, and larger scale
manufacturing initiatives. The vision we saw
for the future of their neighborhood is
inclusive, locally productive, experimental,
and unlike anything else in our
experience.
We visited a planned 1M sqft
industrial/residential/retail development
which has become the new home of the
manufacturing collective Ponyride, and
will include cultural events space and
the framework to support hyperlocal
economic development.
Core City is a rural village in the middle of
a city. The folks who live and work here
are committed to their neighborhood,
and might live to see it become
something as vibrant as it once was, and
even be able to avoid displacement as this happens.

- 34 -

TRIP #3

GRAND RAPIDS

- 35 -

GRANDRAPIDS
Furniture manufacturing legacy,
and current homes to Steelcase.
We joined a team of Latitude
37.8 HS at their invitation, and
attended a semi-annual
convening of 19 schools from
across the country which are
supported by XQ Institute. Travel expenses for this trip were provided by XQ Institute.
We are grateful for the opportunity to participate in this experience, and for the
financial support which allowed us to do so. XQ schools represent a broad range of
innovative and effective approaches to high school education, from the strict academy
model to project-oriented, hands-on, community-integrated programs.

- 36 -

GrandRapidsPublicMuseumSchool
The Grand Rapids Museum School was our host for the event. The Museum School has
two campuses: a middle school inside the main Museum building, and the high school
in an older building which houses some small exhibits, along with the Museum’s
abundant archives.
Museum school has classes inside the Grand Rapids Museum, which seems like a great
way to both provide activation for the museum, and for students to be exposed to…
Grand Rapids Public Schools (the local school district) is home to several innovative
schools, of which the Museum High School and Middle School are just two. There are
K-12 Montessori Schools, an Arts School, a high school called “Innovation Central”,
and more. This openness to creativity and experimentation seems to be in response to
student need. Like Oakland, urban Grand Rapids was a destination for migrating
southern Black Americans after the Civil War; today it is a highly segregated city with
significant poverty, especially in its Black community.
The school includes a recently built design and fabrication space for students. It is
equipped with digital fabrication machines (3d printers, laser cutters, cnc router), as
well as general power and hand tools.
The Museum School’s model is project-based.
Students spend much of their time in open
shared work areas, collaborating with other
students and getting guidance from teachers.
Students have regular sessions in the
makerspace,
- 37 -

There was a well-outfitted fabrication lab in the HS. Much of the equipment did not
seem to have seen much use, but students use the space for design and hands-on
learning activities on a daily basis.
We noticed a lack of integration between Grand Rapids Schools and the surrounding
entrepreneurship and industry. We didn’t have much time to explore the innovation
ecosystem, either in person or remotely, but it was striking that key connectors we
spoke to were not able to point us at much.

- 38 -

StartGarden
Start Garden is a coworking space and
business incubator, funded by Grand
Rapids-area philanthropy and industry
sponsors. They launched several years ago
with a graduated pitch challenge and an
accompanying venture fund. Since its
inception, $5,000 grants have been
awarded to literally hundreds of startup
ventures, and many have progressed to higher levels of funding, up to $500,000 at a
time.
Start Garden has set aside space inside its facilities in which corporate partners have
put some of their staff on site in close proximity to startups. This, in their experience,
has led to increased ability for both sides of this equation (larger companies and
scrappy startups) to contract with each other and help each other in other ways. These
arrangements are unusual, and Start Garden’s approach seems to have both merit and
promise.
When I visited, Start Garden staff told me about some of its upcoming initiatives, which
had to do with community partnerships and increasing the diversity of its members.
Despite having a founding co-director (Darel Ross) who himself is a Black
entrepreneur, the membership and alumni of Start Garden were predominantly white.
Grand Rapids is a city of wealthy individuals and corporations who clearly have
tremendous influence over local innovation and entrepreneurship. This is clear inside
Start Garden - their individual and corporate patrons reflect these conditions. We
didn’t have an opportunity to meet with the executive staff of Start Garden for more
insights, or been able to connect remotely after the fact. More follow up is warranted.

- 39 -

GrandRapidsCooperativeKitchen
Grand Rapids Downtown Market is located
outside of downtown, and is home to several
small and growing food businesses. Upstairs in
this building, the Grand Rapids Cooperative
Kitchen has established itself as a place to found
and grow food businesses of all kinds.
The Kitchen has space and equipment for the
production of catering and events menus, and
many of its members start their businesses by
catering for events, or hosting pop-ups at local
farmers markets and at the Downtown Market.
The Kitchen is also equipped for the production
of certain kinds of packaged foods, and some of
its members work in this space - packaging
foods for consumer or institutional customers.
The Market and Kitchens partner on regular
tasting events, where members of the public can
sample or buy products from Kitchens
members. The Kitchen is also partnered
with an onsite food business incubator
program, which helps new and growing
businesses with planning, capitalization,
and business operations.
This framework means that when space
becomes available in the Downtown
Market, Kitchens member businesses
are often well equipped to take that
space and make it work for them.

- 40 -

TRIP #4

SAN DIEGO AND LOS
ANGELES

- 41 -

SouthernCalifornia
This trip was an attempt to visit a couple sites that were of particular interest to us, and
wasn’t as successful overall as others in this program. This is in part due to the lack of
a local guide and ‘fixer’ to help us get the attention of the facilities we wanted to see,
and partly due to a need to squeeze the trip into a single day to accommodate personal
schedules.
In the end, we were unable to connect with several sites, and a return visit in the future
is warranted.
We were able to tour two sites - their profiles are below.

- 42 -

HighTechHigh
High Tech High was founded in
the year 2000, by a group of tech
industry alumni and civic leaders.
Its founding idea was the
recognition of the need to better
prepare young people for the
modern tech industry. It has
become a network of 17 K-12
charter schools, a graduate
teacher training program, and
several related programs.
When first hearing this story (and the High Tech High name), you might imagine an
exclusive experience that is available only to privileged students. In fact, the diversity
of the student body is impressive - High Tech High is embedded within the San Diego
Unified School District, and all District students are eligible to apply and attend. Many
students of High Tech High commute from far away neighborhoods by public transit to
attend, and HTH has continually located its new schools in those neighborhoods
(according to Wikipedia, “inner city schools”).
The learning experience is student centered in a way that is difficult to fully
comprehend without being immersed in it for some time. But by spending just a short
time watching, listening, and talking with HTH students, the benefit of the work they do
is immediately clear.
We started the day in a room along with teachers from a midwest school district who
were also visiting High Tech High on the same day. We participated in some joint vision
exercises which helped us understand the conditions that High Tech High constantly
strives to create for its students: meaning and empowerment. This was exemplified
when we broke into smaller tour groups which were led by HTH students, and were
told why this was the case. High Tech High receives over 4,000 visitors to its campus
each year, from around the world. Most are educators, or work in education policy. But
others, like us, are interested in High Tech High because it is actually connected to the
larger world in a way that most high schools are not.
- 43 -

This constant stream of visitors means that, on virtually every day, multiple groups of
people are touring the school. HTH staff and students have developed a system in
which an older student and a younger one lead each tour group together, which
provides an opportunity for the younger student to learn, and to develop confidence. It
provides both students with a chance to be valued by visiting adults, which young
people don’t often get. It provides adults with different answers to questions from two
individuals, who clearly have a well developed sense of self.
The students were not timid. They did not avoid questions, even when they tended
toward their personal experiences. They introduced us to other students, and to some
teachers. Those students were similar - direct, confident, curious, and open. We ran
across a student who was filming a clock on the wall, and asked what he was doing.
The answer was unexpected: the student was preparing a portfolio project to apply to
an innovation and entrepreneurship program at nearby USC. His project was a video
that told the story of his business
proposal, which was even more
interesting: he, as a student of the High
Tech High system since middle school,
had discovered that HTH methods are of
value to others, and that this value could
be turned into an enterprise - he was
considering finding ways to package
these insights and tools so that public
schools could find ways to adopt them.
These are insights that you might not be
surprised to hear from a graduate
business school student, coming from a
high school senior.
Another example helps further paint this
picture. Nikki Hinostro, principal of the
High Tech High Middle School, picked us
up for a tour of her school. She left us
waiting in a hallway for a few minutes, and while we were there, we were approached
by three young boys, who asked us about our tour, why we were were visiting High
Tech High, and were clearly interested in what we had to say. In another school
setting, this conversation might have felt forced, or like the students were showing off.
- 44 -

In this context, it felt sincere, and like an interaction we’d be likely to have with
teachers at the school. Nikki returned, and watched the end of the conversation, and
asked, “how old do you think those students were?” It turns out they were all fifth
graders.
There’s so much more to say about High Tech High - its buildings, its campus, its
community partnerships, its openness. But this is
an Innovation Center report, and there’s a
particular reason High Tech High made an
impression on us: We recognize that the
relationship between traditional high school and
the adult working world is largely focused on
training and jobs, and this is tremendously limiting.
Many individuals will find their way in life by
following different paths, and the sooner they can
start exploring them, the more likely they will do great things. In an innovation
ecosystem, young people must play a part, and the schools that support their ability to
do so are rare and valuable partners.
Nikki Hinostro gave us lots of advice about building an innovation center that connects
to young people. The best advice: “involve young people right from the start,” which
seems so obvious that we might have overlooked it otherwise. We have great local
education partners who believe in the capabilities of their students, and who are
capable of supporting them in a meaningful way as our program moves from analysis
to fundraising to planning and execution. This conversation left us with a clear mission
of finding ways to ensure that this happens. Oakland’s very own Latitude 37.8 HS was
founded by leaders who left High Tech High to continue their work here in Oakland,
and we expect they will be a key partner in this effort as we move forward.

- 45 -

LosAngelesCleantechIncubator(LACI)
This visit was one of the more frustrating in our Fab
City travels. It’s clear that we were not really able
to get past the surface of this facility, and we left
wanting more.
LACI was created in partnership with the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power
(LADWP), who made their building available to the program, and which hosts a building
innovation exposition inside LACI. This innovation expo provides an opportunity for
LACI members to showcase their products, and also creates a funding stream for LACI.
LACI is running a large scale incubator and accelerator program which services 30-40
startup companies each year. They have sectoral focus in three areas: energy,
transportation, and sustainable cities. They have dozens of companies who collectively
have raised well over $100m in funding. They announced early this year the launch of a
$5m impact fund.
They recently launched a
workforce training program,
in which fellows work with
startups to learn a range of
valuable skills.
LACI has a 50,000 sqft
Advanced Prototyping
Center, which sells
memberships to individuals
and teams outside the LACI
incubator community, as
well as putting these
facilities at the disposal of incubator companies. The Advanced Prototyping Center
includes literally millions of dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure, including a
wet biochemistry lab, machine shop, electronics lab, and digital fabrication equipment.
The staff of this facility also run a job shop, producing parts to order on this equipment.
- 46 -

LACI staff said that their immediate priorities included increased community
engagement and increased diversity of its membership. As an outsider, I was struck
when visiting how literally walled off from the surrounding community LACI’s facility is.
It is also in a purely industrial neighborhood, and not near commercial, cultural or
other centers of activities - these factors increase difficulty of achieving these goals.

- 47 -

TRIP #5

BOSTON,
CAMBRIDGE,
SOMERVILLE,
PROVIDENCE RI
- 48 -

BOSTON
In the closing weeks of 2019, we were able to coordinate a three-day visit to several
Boston area sites. Boston is a
Fab City, but didn’t have active
leadership when we initially
planned our travel itinerary.
Fortunately, that changed
through the efforts of the Fab
Foundation and CIC. We’re
grateful to have been able to
make it to Boston, and need to
express special appreciation to
Julia Hansen, who is leading
Boston area Fab City efforts, and
who was the best host and local guide we could have hoped for. Julia: Fab City and
Boston are lucky to have you!
One thing clear from direct experience on the ground in Boston, and from online
research about it from afar, is that we have just barely scratched the surface of a
robust innovation ecosystem with this survey. In part, this system is fed by large
institutions (MIT, Harvard, BU, etc.), but at its edges it's interfacing with
(working-class) makers and builders, and is building bridges to equitable exposure,
education, access, and support. In contrast to Chicago and Detroit, which are building
on a local manufacturing base and factory building stock, what we found in Boston was
primarily driven by forward-looking new ventures.
A lasting impression: most people in our cities will never directly experience what it's
like to be part of this sort of innovation community. This applies even to the vast
majority of Boston area dwellers. Universities are great at elevating the gifted and the
privileged, but are exclusive by design, and the ecosystem they feed tends to inherit
both their strengths and flaws. A true Fab City innovation system must be more
permeable, more visible, and more focused on all the humans it touches.

- 49 -

THEPOSSIBLEPROJECT/MADEPOSSIBLE
The Possible Project is an after school entrepreneurship program for High Schoolers.
Similar in many ways to The Met's Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, the
program helps young entrepreneurs develop business plans, and supports the launch
of student ventures. It has been running its programs in a small facility in Cambridge,
but is expanding into a much larger facility in the
Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. This will put it in
closer proximity to the Boston schools and students
it primarily serves. In this facility, TPP expects to be
leasing chunks of space to mission-aligned partners
and incubated businesses as they grow.
Made Possible is a product design practice that
operates within the Possible Project. It's currently
developing a line of beautiful lamps, and hopes to
ramp up
production in
a controlled way that allows it to involve TPP
youth in ongoing design and production tasks.
Jack came to TPP from danger!awesome - a
combination makerspace and design practice
which was also formerly in Cambridge, and
brings a strong matrix of creative and business
skills to the program. While investing in
longer-term product development, Made
Possible continues to produce
branded/customized items for all sorts of customers, involving students when possible
(pun sort of intended).
We would recommend a follow up visit to TPP and Made Possible in their new location,
digs to see how these projects unfold. Made Possible is the sort of social enterprise
which has the potential to serve a market, make a profit, and simultaneously carry out
its social mission of engagement, skill building, and support for young entrepreneurs.

- 50 -

Possible Project is funded by local philanthropists who became wealthy through
entrepreneurship, to give back to a local community of young entrepreneurs. The
program is particularly interested in exposing young people to actual work in the form
of internships, and in supporting entrepreneurship in youth.
TPP has found that it’s actually really difficult to put students in meaningful work in
design and problem solving - that these things are best left to experienced designers
and fabricators, and that clients tend to want quicker turns than are possible when
interns or trainees are learning as they go. This challenge is the primary reason for their
pivot to product development. They’ve got a full enough pipeline of customers and
work to keep the project generating revenue in the meantime. Since production is
repetitive, they think it will be easier to train students to do the work while staying
competitive.
This program is an example of using real world customers to foster a learning
environment. We have confidence that TPP and Made Possible will find great products
that will allow it to continue to do this work, while continuing to provide its basic after
school programming. Their new Roxbury space sounds interesting, and should inform
some of the work we do in Oakland. Future Fab City travel delegations should make a
point of visiting this new facility.

- 51 -

BUild(EPIC)@BOSTONUNIVERSITY

Boston University - EPIC, BUild Lab, Innovate@BU
This was a two-part tour, unified by a single leader. Gerry Fine is the director of both
the Engineering Product Innovation Center and the recently-founded Innovate@BU
accelerator. Gerry has a long career in manufacturing, working on the cutting edge of
large-scale glass and solar production. He seems to really enjoy his current endeavor.
Boston University is a big school, with over 30,000 students; 1,500 of these are in the
College of Engineering. The EPIC center serves as a classroom, filled with lots of
equipment, from run-of-the-mill lathes and mills to 6 axis CNC machines, various
industrial 3D printers (including multiple versions of metal printers), automated
production line, and much more. BUild Lab is the facility where this equipment and a
team of engineers operate. In between classroom activities, the space is open to BU
community members (students, faculty, staff) for general use. By all accounts, it is a
well-trafficked space. We showed up during finals week, and the lab was in limited
operation.
- 52 -

In addition to the obvious things you'd expect to see in a facility like BUild, there is a
materials science lab, set up for measurement and analysis, a small foundry for
casting, a robotics lab with a robust autonomous swarm drone program, and a whole
lot more. Because BUild has a mission to develop well-rounded engineers, all these
facilities are important. Instead of focusing just on science or just on the skilled
operation of equipment, students are expected to be able to be conversant in various
engineering practices. This is particularly relevant as our manufacturing ecoystem
shifts to increasingly incorporate new machines, new materials, and new ways of
designing for them.
Innovate@BU launched less than two years ago, but it sure doesn't feel that way. On
the (snowy, icy, pre-holiday) afternoon we visited, the space was pretty active with
several students and teams using the coworking space. It has a staff of seven running
acclerator programs, and they're organized around supporting mission-forward
ventures, both for-profit and non-profit. All students from BU's many colleges (Arts,
Engineering, Medical/Dental, Business, Law, Social Work, Theology and more) are
served here, and social mission is the thread that ties this heterogeneous community
together. The facility hosts events on a near-daily basis, ranging from basic business
and financial planning, to pitch events, startup competitions, and networking.

- 53 -

THEENGINE
The Engine is a $200m fund created by MIT and partners to fund what they call "Tough
Tech" - ventures that require patience
and significant long-term investment,
but which can solve big problems. The
staff recognized early on that there are
certain significant costs involved in
these efforts which would be better
shared among their portfolio companies
and managed inhouse. These include:
space (often specialized space),
expensive equipment, and skilled
professionals (often engineers of one sort or another). To get more bang for the fund's
buck, The Engine built out a 25,000 sqft space for its portfolio companies, including a
prototyping shop, wet and bio labs, and also created partnerships with others in the
region who could support companies whose needs couldn't be met inhouse.

Engine companies are working in computing and AI, automation and robotics,
chemistry, biology and medicine, energy (including fusion power), satellite networks
and more. The Engine is sort of a highly concentrated manifestation of what I think
about when I think about research institutions like MIT - a nexus of access to the
cutting edge of whatever, and the resources to push further. In the Engine's case, the
work is about recruiting teams in labs to take the leap to commercialization when
they're working on truly impactful projects.

- 54 -

The air sure is rare inside the Engine. They are clearly concerned about intellectual
property protection on behalf of their members, and our tour was limited as a result.
We do expect this facility and fund to be part of big innovation over the upcoming
decades.

- 55 -

GREENTOWNLABS

"The Largest Cleantech Incubator in the United States." - nearly 100,000 sqft of space,
split between clean coworking, and lab/shop (wet chemistry lab, machine and digital
fabrication shops). Greentown is supported by member dues and by its corporate
partners, who provide mostly in-kind resources in the form of materials, equipment,
software, and on-the-ground expertise to Greentown and its members.
One of Greentown's programs is the Manufacturing Initiative (aka FORGE - these
names seem to be semi-interchangeable) is a program which directs its effort at
strengthening a local Massachusetts-area supplier network which supports emerging
businesses. FORGE acts as a supply chain brokerage which works on both ends of the
problem - in the startup ecosystem and with established suppliers - to increasingly
localize design and manufacturing. This is
Because of the IP-protected nature of the facility, we toured, but weren't able to take
photos of, the most interesting parts of this facility - the dedicated spaces where
teams are growing their operations. Greentown's model is high-flexibility, enabling
companies to take more space when possible and easily release space they no longer
need. Member companies bring in their own specialized infrastructure (we saw walk-in
- 56 -

coolers, big filtration systems, dedicated test and production equipment, and lots of
people working throughout the space).
Joubin Hatamsadeh and Greg Ralich showed us around (thanks for the great tour,
guys!). Joubin recently joined the Greentown team as VP of Operations - he ran French
Tech Hub, which if my notes are accurate was a member at CIC for some time -
another example of CIC's reach. Greg has been around a bit longer, and runs
Greentown's labs and the member floor. He has spent much of the last couple years
building out a robust safety program which has allowed Greentown to scale safely - no
small feat for such an active community. Fun fact - in his past life, Greg was a custom
bike builder.
Greentown is unable to provide a comprehensive education program or specialized
support to its members, but one of Greentown's motivations for locating where it has is
its proximity to Artisan's Asylum. Artisan's fills in some gaps for Greentown members
with these needs: Artisan's members work on contract for Greentown member
companies from time to time, and Greentown members often use Artisan's facilities for
training and access to equipment that Greentown might not have in house. It's clear
that Greentown sees itself as a connector in this ecosystem, and is putting in the work
to develop and maintain its network for the benefit of its members and other
stakeholders. This is valuable in a Fab City partner.
Greentown is bursting at the seams with growing companies. Their ability to make their
space adaptable to the shifting needs of these member companies is their super
power. They’ve been able to achieve impressive scale by doing this well, and they’re a
great example of good systems, good partners, and great staff leading to great things.

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ARTISAN’SASYLUM
Artisan's Asylum is OG in the makerspace world. Founded in 2010, it has grown
several times in its history and today occupies a 40,000sqft building. Most of this
space is allocated to small dedicated spaces for its members, who run the gamut from
amateur tinkerer to craftsperson to professional design & fabrication and early-stage
startups...and everything in between. Like so many places I visited on this trip,
Artisan's is big, and ambitious. It's working on its next expansion phase to add another
20k-40k sqft to its footprint.
Inside the facility are common equipment including lots of digital fabrication machines
(laser cutters, 3d printers, etc.), and traditional equipment for the skilled craftsperson.
This includes a large welding and machining workshop, a well-equipped wood shop,
electronics stations, jewelry benches, sewing and screen printing, and more. Its class
schedule is robust, often hosting multiple classes on a single day. These range from
basic operation and safety training to facilitated projects, and advanced skills
workshops for the more accomplished designer/fabricator. Artisan's attributes much of
its recent growth to the creative needs of apartment- and condo-dwellers who don't
have appropriate space to contain noise and mess.

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Artisan's happens to be just a block away from Greentown Labs (next stop), and its
members regularly provide services to Greentown and its members - more below.
We had a great conversation with Director Lars Torres about Fab City and how to make
it actionable and practical for his programs and members. Lars is steeped in arts, the
maker community, and policy efforts to support both of these. He's both artist and
entrepreneur himself, which helps him clearly see the various needs of the Artisan's
member community.
We had more questions than answers in our conversation, but in my mind, the most
important function of Fab City for a space like Artisan's Asylum is to make sure it's
included in conversation with other area facilities working in design and manufacturing
for the mutual benefit of all. In Boston, this means building intentional bridges
between the Kendall Square innovation system and the surrounding world of
closer-to-the-ground humans. In the Bay Area, this means connecting the Berkeley
and Palo Alto-driven tech venture community to the rest of us humans. The good news:
I see this happening already in both places (though there is much more to do on this
front).
There is no one easy answer as to how to move a city closer to the Fab City goal of
making all it needs, but connecting smart, passionate people together and inspiring
them to work toward this end gives voice and agency to those who are already
contributing to a manufacturing community. This also allows each facility and program
to voice Fab City in language and priorities relevant to its own needs and those of its
stakeholders.
Artisan’s Asylum and other makerspaces like it tend to exist in a fringy alternative
world. This is true in Boston, Oakland, and so many other cities. There have been
attempts by insiders in this world and outsiders to forge relationships that allow these
spaces to exist (and in a few cases, thrive). The visionaries on either side of
partnerships like this are rare and special people, and recognizing their role in Fab City
systems (and supporting the work they do) is critical.

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PROVIDENCE,RI:THEMETHSCENTERFORINNOVATION
&ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The Met High School is the flagship school of Big Picture Learning. Founded in 1995,
BPL formed to provide a student-led learning experience in high school, which at the
time was unheard of. The Met HS in Providence opened shortly after. There are now
BPL high schools in 27 states, including over a dozen in California alone. As the origin
of BPL's model and programs, The Met plays a unique role in this network, and I was
glad to be able to visit the mothership.
In 2005, The Met launched E360, its entrepreneurship immersion program, which
grew in popularity and success over the years. The program recently moved into its
own building on Met campus, and continues to expand its programming. It bills itself
as the only standalone entrepreneurship center for high school students in the country.
The Center For Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) hosts several school owned
student-run businesses, including Big Picture Soda, Bull Dog Print Shop, and the 201
Met Store. Met HS alumni created these businesses while in school, and current
students now run them with minimal oversight from CIE faculty. Students regularly
participate in nationwide pitch competitions, and many past businesses have won;
some are still active several years later. I guess the point here is that this program is
not a thought experiment for entrepreneurial students - it is a launch pad for their early
efforts in business.

- 60 -

CIE staff have built a program which regularly takes students to business networking
events, pitch competitions, cultural events, and more. [Incidentally (and not a
coincidence), this calendar includes regular student visits to the Providence chapter of
Venture Cafe, which further illustrates the reach of the CIC network.] This is one of the
more intriguing functions of the program for me - bringing prospective entrepreneurs
and leaders into an environment which supports the development of their professional
networks.
We visited at the end of the student holiday fair. I'm super grateful to Jodie Woodruff
for taking the time to meet with me at the end of what was clearly a pretty active day,
and the culmination of a term's worth of work in the Center.
The holiday fair gives students the opportunity to test their products and services with
potential customers, and try to make a few bucks. The Center gives students a small
amount of money for materials to produce their offering, helping them learn firsthand
about how to create return on investment.
CIE's vision is ambitious - Jodie Woodruff & her team want to expand beyond their
significant success in supporting student-established small business; they're shifting
to consider how best to help students take on innovation in a more direct way.
Following the Lean Startup principal that a 'startup' is a team in search of a business
model, they hope to create conditions which enable students to inhabit the startup
mindset. I'll be paying attention to see how this goes.
Recognizing the unique worth of young entrepreneurs is not a given. Creating and
running a system flexible enough to support their development is one of the harder
things we can imagine anyone doing. The fact that CIE has been successful at this over
many years is a testament to their creativity and skill. Oakland both lacks and needs a
high school which can develop this competency.

- 61 -

CICBOSTON
CIC Boston happens to be the HQ of the Fab Foundation,
and we got to drop in on Sherry Lassiter in between
conference calls to say 'Hi from Oakland!'. The Fab
Foundation making its home at CIC is the primary factor
in the creation of Fab@CIC - Fab Foundation helped with
equipment acquisition and expertise to get the program
off the ground. Fab@CIC is a mini FabLab - a specific
designation for a FabLab that doesn't have the full
component of recommended equipment, but is a mission-aligned facility in the FabLab
network.
We believe the mini FabLab designation is a powerful tool for enabling the FabLab
network to evolve in a meaningful way that supports Fab City's systemic view of the
world; it lowers barriers to entry and allows FabLabs to
operate in site- or community-specific ways. We support
the evolution of this designation and FabLab
membership as a result.
Fab@CIC is partially located in the space occupied by
Render Coffee Bar, and is working to enable more
visibility and access for the public. Unfortunately, they're
hung up getting permission for this; the idea of light
manufacturing combined with food service seems to be confusing to the Boston
powers-that-be. Today, Fab@CIC mostly provides access and services (laser cutting,
3d printing, etc.) to CIC coworking members and a few offsite startups. Julia Hansen
runs Fab@CIC, and has recently stepped in to bring new energy and urgency to the
Boston/Cambridge/Somerville Fab City program.
CIC is big. Bigger than it seems from a distance. It’s growing so quickly that it’s hard to
get a read on all the things it’s doing and involved in.. CIC has a legacy underpinning
innovation districts around the world, and it's engaged in a multi-pronged expansion
strategy into new services and new geography. It has spun off, incubated, or partnered
in all sorts of programs, including Venture Cafe, MassRobotics, LabCentral, Impact Hub
- 62 -

Boston, Roxbury Innovation Center, and many more. If an Oakland Fab City team had
a full week, it might be possible investigate all these - each one has a distinct story and
a role to play in supporting innovation. We recommend a follow up visit which includes
this on its agenda.

- 63 -

Oakland Fab City Innovation Center - 2019 Final Report & Findings

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