The business model of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) laboratories – A triple-layered perspective

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120205Get rights and content

Highlights

  • DIY labs are technology incubators offering users physical and social spaces.

  • DIY labs offer a platform of science innovation and incubation at grassroots level.

  • DIY labs engage with all the parties in the Triple Helix Model for funding.

Abstract

As the question of funding for DIY laboratories remains a matter of central interest for the financial sustainability of laboratories, this paper studies Do-It-Yourself (DIY) laboratories from the under-researched business model and management perspective. We have applied the triple-layered business model canvas (TLBMC) to explore and understand DIY laboratories from the economic, environmental, and social value creation aspects. Based on our comprehensive literature review and exploratory case studies, our research findings reveal that DIY laboratories are essentially technology hubs offering technology enthusiasts and entrepreneurs physical and social spaces and business incubation to help them survive and thrive. Engaged with all the Triple Helix stakeholders, DIY laboratories offer a platform of science innovation and technology incubation at the grassroots level for technology entrepreneurs to grow economically, socially, and sustainably.

Introduction

The global movement of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) laboratories, since the formation of DIYbio.org in Boston in 2008, has created many community-based science hubs in cities, towns, and villages around the world. Originally aimed at spreading biotechnology usage, DIY laboratories have now gone beyond the borders of industrial and academic institutions and are open to the public (Sarpong et al., 2020). This has become possible due to decreased costs in laboratory equipment, order-ready materials, and boundless scientific information (Million-Perez, 2016). Enabled and further promoted by the Internet and digital business environment, discourse around the DIY movement evolves on dedicated websites and online forums (Wray, 2012) such as DIYbio.org, facebook.com (specifically closed groups for DIYers), and slack.com. With the easily accessible knowledge and information on the Internet, fueled by the decreasing costs in hardware and the increasing sophistication of smart phones, DIY science is now more feasible than ever before (Grey et al., 2017).

Compared with mainstream science, one of the key differences of DIY science is that many DIY science experiments are conducted in the unconventional venues of DIY laboratories (Sarpong et al., 2019). These DIY laboratories can be associated with names such as DIYbio laboratories, hackerspaces, makerspaces, Fab Labs, hack labs, TechShop, and so on. They also co-locate with related spaces, such as artist communities, co‐working spaces, or start‐up incubators (Davies, 2017). The “scientists” that are involved in the DIY laboratories, often non-specialists, hobbyists, and amateurs, but also an increasing number of professional scientists (Griffiths, 2014), are conducting scientific experiments or making scientific discoveries outside conventional institutional settings in these DIY laboratories (Nascimento et al., 2014). These scientific experiments and research are generally conducted in areas such as biology, environmental health, and epidemiology. Due to their free format by design, they often appear as transdisciplinary projects that engage the sciences, the arts, and the law (Nascimento et al., 2014). With less than adequate means (Ledford, 2010), using open-source tools, and adhering to open paradigms to share knowledge and outputs with others, these DIY scientists appear as science enthusiasts who tinker, hack, fix, recreate, and assemble objects and systems through transdisciplinary projects in creative and unexpected directions in DIY laboratories (Ledford, 2010; Nascimento et al., 2014).

Since the emergence of the DIY laboratory phenomenon, significantly increased numbers of DIY “scientists” are taking part in and engaged with DIY laboratories. More and more venues that are associated with DIY laboratories are “popping up” in cities across the world (Sarpong et al., 2019). Currently, some salient examples of DIY laboratories are under different names (e.g. DIYbio labs, hackerspaces, and Fab Labs), and this reveals that the number of venues associated with DIY laboratories grew exponentially under these different names. For instance, Fab Labs started from the first six Fab Labs in 2004, to 413 labs in 2013, and currently there are 1830 Fab Labs in the Fab Foundation Network in more than 100 countries across the globe (Fab Foundation, 2020). As for DIYbio.org, founded in 2008, the community expanded from 14 groups across the continents of Europe and North America in 2013 to the current 108 groups in five continents (i.e. North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania) (DIYbio.org, 2020a). When it comes to hackerspaces, the movement started with less than a dozen spaces within Germany in the 1990s, and there are currently 2344 listed hackerspaces, of which 1415 are marked as active and 357 marked as planned (Hackerspaces.org, 2020). Figs. 1–3 below provide an overview of the spread of Fab Lab, DIYbio, and hackerspace centers around the world. However, many groups have mushroomed over the years, making it challenging to quantify the number of people who are engaged in DIY labs, and also the number of community-based laboratories (Landrain et al., 2013; Meyer, 2013; Tocchetti and Aguiton, 2015). Nevertheless, the following figures may shed some light on the magnitude of the DIY movement: it is estimated that 135 million Americans, or 57% of the American adult population, could be considered makers (Stone, 2015), and participants joining Maker Faires – an event to celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science projects, and the DIY mindset – grew from 83,000 in 2009 (Trabulsi, 2015) to about 1.4 million in 2017 globally (Maker Faire, 2020).

Despite the rapid growth and expansion of different kinds of DIY laboratories globally, little is known about DIY laboratories in academic literature, especially regarding management and business models of DIY laboratories. Previous studies reveal that DIY laboratories aim to ease the social structure of laboratory work, which generally is within a rigid formal organization with little room for collaborative work (Guthrie, 2014), while some academics have attempted to review the strategies implemented by DIY laboratories with the ecosystem theory (Bloom and Dees, 2008) and discussed how stakeholders take part in the laboratories themselves. Building on such research, this paper intends to provide a more nuanced understanding and develop the business model framework for DIY laboratories. The goal is to offer some insights as to how DIY laboratories can achieve financial independence to support their ultimate goal of open information. Drawing from business model literature, we take an exploratory and holistic approach to understand the phenomenon and business model of a DIY laboratory. Our study contributes to the literature streams of DIY laboratories and business model canvas.

Section snippets

Literature review

As this study approaches the phenomenon of DIY laboratories from the perspective of business model canvas, two strands of relevant literature are reviewed in this section. First, DIY laboratory literature as a whole, yet with a look into the different umbrella terms and their definitions and how they are connected to DIY laboratories, followed by the various venues of DIY laboratories and the funding model of various DIY laboratories. Second, business model canvas, in which a specific focus is

Research methods

Our study aims to develop the triple-layered business model for DIY laboratories. As there is relatively limited preceding research regarding DIY laboratories and their business models, this study adopts an explorative approach of building theory from multiple case studies (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). Although exploratory case study research suffers from low external validity (Bryman, 2016), it could nevertheless enable us to understand the research question and help construct theories from

Genspace (DIYbio.org)

Genspace is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to promoting science literacy through citizen access to biotechnology, by providing STEM educational outreach, cultural events, and a platform for science innovation at the grassroots level. In 2009, a group of hobbyists, entrepreneurs, artists and scientists met in a living room to explore their interests and enthusiasm in biology and biotechnology. Within a year of the meeting, co-founders Nurit Bar-Shai, Ellen Jorgensen, Daniel Grushkin,

Business models of DIY laboratories

A triple-layered business model of DIY laboratories has been informed and developed from our research findings based upon the identified cases and comprehensive literature review. Fig. 6 below presents our summary of the analysis of DIY laboratories business model canvas from the economic, environmental, and social values perspectives. Our analysis shows that DIY laboratories share a common logic of shared knowledge and easy access to equipment and physical and social spaces from not only the

Conclusion

From a theoretical perspective, this research found that DIY laboratories do not have a well-established definition, and thus a definition for DIY laboratory has been proposed. In addition, we have attempted to map out some of the terms related to the DIY movement and how they affect the theoretical development of different research streams and disciplines. Further, our research is one of the first that attempts to observe and understand DIY laboratories from business model and management

Declaration of Competing Interest

None.

Dr. Weimu You is Lecturer in Sustainability and Global Value Chains at Brunel University London. His research interests include sustainability, global value chains, innovation and technology management. His work has been published in internationally peer-review academic journals such as Critical Perspectives on International Business, International Journal of Management Reviews and Journal of Cleaner Production.

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    Dr. Weimu You is Lecturer in Sustainability and Global Value Chains at Brunel University London. His research interests include sustainability, global value chains, innovation and technology management. His work has been published in internationally peer-review academic journals such as Critical Perspectives on International Business, International Journal of Management Reviews and Journal of Cleaner Production.

    Dr. Weifeng Chen is Senior Lecturer in Brunel University London. He specialises in innovation management and statistical modelling. He has a particular research interest in innovation, Artificial Intelligence and business models. Dr. Chen has published in International Journal of Production Economics, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Regional Studies, the Journal of Organizational Change Management, European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Information System Management, Advances in Information Systems Management and the International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies, among others.

    Michael Agyapong is a Ph.D. candidate at Brunel University London. His research interests include technology management and innovation management.

    Dr. Chima Mordi is Senior Lecturer at Brunel University London. His primary research interests lie in the broad academic disciplines of Labour History, Comparative Human Resource Management and Employment Relations. He is particularly interested in African labour history and contemporary Sub-Saharan African employment relations. His research has been published in journals such as International Journal of Human Resource Management, Thunderbird International Business Review, Personnel Review, Employee Relations and Career Development International journal.

    This article belong to the special section on Do-it-Yourself Laboratories (DiY Labs): Implication for Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) Policy.

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