Sustainable Innovation for Open Hardware and Open Science – Lessons from The Hardware Hacker

Sometimes, businesses restrict their hardware products with intellectual property legal instruments to maintain near-monopolies in market niches. This proprietary approach to technology risks creating anti-competitive rent-seeking behaviour and comes with its own set of economic and social costs. In The Hardware Hacker, Andrew ‘Bunnie’ Huang builds on his entrepreneurial experience in manufacturing hardware to provide a viable alternative. In addition to extensive tips on the practicalities of hardware mass production, Huang’s book documents the thriving technology counterculture in Shenzhen, China’s ‘Silicon Valley’. Called the ‘shanzhai’, these entrepreneurs ignore patent and copyright restrictions and openly copy features from other products to remix them into new ones. While some call them thieves, shanzhai innovations pre-empted now-common device categories such as the smartwatch, and may address market niches unreachable by intellectual property-encumbered business models. Huang personally experimented with this approach (while operating within existing intellectual property laws) through his open hardware business ventures – notably the Novena open laptop – and in this book discusses the lessons learned. They include reflections on access to hardware as a form of civic action, implications of advances in biotechnology, and an optimistic view on the growth of open hardware in light of the deceleration of Moore’s Law. Refreshingly accessible and entertaining, The Hardware Hacker shows us the importance of the right to tinker in an age where technology permeates all aspects of life.