Shanghai "Maker" Urban Culture Construction in the Context of Big Cloud Movement

2016-03-18 04:16
Asian Agricultural Research 2016年12期

School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 201306, China

1 Introduction

Shanghai should orient its development to becoming a global science and technology innovation center. Now, it plans to launch a strategic research of new round of development in 2050, carry out future urban planning research in 2040, and start the implementation of thirteenth five-year development planning research. In this process, it is required to fully consider the impact of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial reform, include the construction of global innovation center into the layout of the future development of Shanghai, formulate global scientific and technological innovation center development strategy, and further make clear the leading and support function of scientific and technological innovation to economic and social development of Shanghai. Internet sharing has reduced the innovation cost to a historically low level at unprecedented speed and frequency. Maker products such as 3D printer and wearable equipment are coming into our sight. In his bookMakers:NewIndustrialRevolution, Chris Anderson considered open-source innovation as the engine of the third industrial revolution. When visiting Chaihuo Maker Space in Shenzhen, the premier Li Keqiang set high hopes on "mass entrepreneurship and innovation". During the two meetings, the word "Maker" was written into the government work report.GuidingOpinionsoftheGeneralOfficeoftheStateCouncilonExpandingMakerSpaceandPromotingInnovationandBusinessStartupsbytheGeneralPublicadded a new force for innovation and business startup for makers from the policy field. In the end of March 2015, Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission issued the "Entrepreneurship Pujiang Action Plan" to build the best city in the world, and plan to gather 200000 people to start up businesses, with more than 3000 entrepreneurship enterprises, to form 100 startup unions. "Entrepreneurship Pujiang" implemented 8 major actions, in which the most innovative one is the "city of maker" action, to build the global best practice city of maker.

2 The relationship between "Big Cloud Movement" and "Maker"

The appearance of "Maker" is the representative of innovation generation 2.0, based on the social technology development path from personal communication to personal computing, and then to personal making, to build a user-centered, application-oriented under innovation environment integrating the creative, design and making. Innovation 2.0, namely, the advent of the era of innovation, promotes innovation to come down from the altar, and become mass innovation and social innovation from individual innovation. As long as you have the spirit of innovation, as long as you can convert your idea into products, you are a "Maker". It reflects a positive attitude towards life, and there is the meaning of making effort to find solutions through action and practice.

2.1Characteristicsof"Maker"

2.1.1Gathering people to create the atmosphere of maker. When there is maker space, makers will have their own base and their own home. When the makers come together, they can intuitively feel their presence, which is conducive to creating better maker atmosphere.

2.1.2Sharing resources to make the making simple. The Maker Space not only provides makers with place for innovation, but also provides the ordinary people with the hardware resources and conditions. Besides, a variety of devices, objects, equipment can be used in Maker Space. Also, tool kits can be bought at extremely low price, so that ordinary people can make things at home and become makers.

2.1.3Sharing the experience to understand in practice. At present, most domestic Maker Spaces regularly hold various types of making activities, maker workshop, naker open night, and maker salon. Maker Space activities are not merely verbal communication, and there are hands-on demonstration and practice. When entering the Maker Space, you should do as a maker does, rather than an onlooker.

Because the Maker is a group of sharing people, naturally, there will be a place to gather a group of makers, such place is called Maker Space. The first domestic Maker Space is "New Workshop" set up by Li Dawei, Wu Sili, and Xie Minlin in Shanghai in 2010. Later, more Maker Spaces appeared in Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Nanjing and other places there, of which the prominent ones include Beijing Maker Space and Shenzhen Chaihuo Maker Space, and as well as Shanghai New Workshop. In Shanghai, in order to realize the scale innovation, nearly 40 startup service organizations have jointly set up the Shanghai Maker Space Alliance. As the first regional public creation space alliance in China, it will become a platform for resource sharing and exchange and cooperation of new incubator resources in Shanghai.

2.2MakercultureMaker culture is a kind of sub-culture and variant culture formed in the mass culture. Makers are people fond of science and technology, keen on personal practice, and firmly believe that they can get ample food and clothing by working with their own hands. The maker culture is extension of DIY culture and it blends technological elements. DIY culture is the combination of punk concept and anti-consumerism. The punk concept usually represents the rebellion, anti-authority, individualism and free thinking. The maker culture combines characteristics of punk culture and anti-consumerism. It disapproves random consumption and is found of creative reuse with existing resources.

2.3Therelationshipbetween"BigCloudMovement"and"MakerSpace" The previous innovation 1.0 is deemed as the capacity of certain social group. They gather in a high science and technology industry and use their innovative spirit to promote social innovation and progress. When the whole society takes the constantly progressing technology as a standard, if the Maker concept wants to go farther and to have richer connotation, we can not ignore the existence of the concept of "Big Cloud Movement".

Zhu Xiaoming, director of Shanghai Research Center for Digital and Internet Finance and president of China Europe International Business School, said in his speech on "Sweat and Gold of Mobile Internet O2O", if in the era of product economy, its infrastructure is railway, road and bridge taxes, and water, electricity, and gas; in the present digital service times, it still needs soft things, namely, "big, cloud, movement", in other words, "big data", "cloud computing", "platform economy" and "mobile Internet".

Premier Li Keqiang proposed vigorously promoting the development of "Maker" group in cities mainly because the makers have spirit of innovation, ability of uniting knowledge and practice, and the most important, once the point of view of makers is proven to have possibility of transforming into the business model, startup will become a matter of course. In the present labor market environment of "stimulating employment with startup", the development of Maker will undoubtedly realize employment of a large number of labors. However, if makers want to realize a long-term development, rather than a flash in the pan, like the DIY phenomenon, it is necessary to create the development environment from the hardware and software. For now, except Guangzhou, the four first-tier cities have maker spaces, the other second and third tier cities are constantly exploring a new mode of development, such as the introduction of maker space into the library, coffee bar and other places, these are constantly improving the hardware environment for the development of maker space. However, the present situation is soft environment always lags behind the hardware facilities, makers also need to solve this urgent problem. The interests of makers focus on engineering-oriented topics, such as electronics, machinery, robots, 3D printing,etc., and also include skillful use of related tools, such as CNC, laser cutting machine, as well as the traditional metal processing, carpentry and artistic making, such as casting, handicrafts and so on. To put these practical operations into practice, it is necessary to establish a "Big Cloud Movement" resource platform. "Big Data" provides key information of customer demands and product performance for makers, while "cloud computing" helps makers change from theory to physical construction; "platform economy" is the inevitable path from innovation to business startup and then to economic transformation, while "Mobile Internet" is the method for disseminating maker products. Therefore, the development of maker space must be based on the improvement of soft environment.

3 The necessity of cultivating "Maker" urban culture for establishing Shanghai global scientific and technological innovation center

At present, Shanghai is plans to launch a strategic research of new round of development in 2050, carry out future urban planning research in 2040, and started start the implementation of thirteenth five-year development planning research. In this process, it is required to fully consider the impact of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial reform, include the construction of global innovation center into the layout of the future development of Shanghai, formulate global scientific and technological innovation center development strategy, and further make clear the leading and support function of scientific and technological innovation to economic and social development of Shanghai. The fundamental purpose of scientific and technological innovation is to achieve the docking of innovation and technology with the real economy. Thus, the construction of global science and technology innovation center is ultimately to achieve business startup through innovation, and promote urban economic development through innovation and business startup. Foreign scholars have put forward the construction of "entrepreneurial university". If this concept is popularized, it becomes we want to establish "entrepreneurial society". The real power that promotes social progress has always been innovation and technology. The development of "maker" realizes innovation practice not limited to a part of the community, but makes the innovation awareness deeply rooted in thinking mode of every social citizen, to transform the innovation from the small group to the masses, and achieve "mass business startup and innovation". Therefore, in the process of building the global scientific and technological innovation center, Shanghai should strive to cultivate the Maker culture, cultivate the awareness of mass innovation, and strive to build an "entrepreneurial" and "innovative" society.

4 Integrating the "maker culture" into Shanghai urban culture

Shanghai culture is also known as "Shanghai style culture", which is characterized by openness, creativity, and diversity, the spirit of Shanghai is like the ocean accommodating all rivers on earth, the pursuit of excellence, enlightened wisdom and humble atmosphere. The creative in cultural characteristics refers to the innovative spirit, filled with the vitality, the "pursuit of excellence" in the spirit of the city also requires innovative and creative spirit, to promote the development of urban innovative spirit in continuous innovation, integrated innovation and re-innovation through the introduction and digestion.

When solving the problem of integration of spirit of maker, the key is to cultivate the innovation awareness of the citizens. First, it is required to strengthen the dissemination of "Maker" urban culture, such as selecting the paper media and new media, adopting the means of advertisement to disseminate, and enhance the familiarity of the public with the concept of maker. Second, it is required to propagate the Maker culture in colleges and universities. College students are a group of people easy to accept new ideas. According to the survey, most of the members of the "Maker Space" are highly educated intellectuals, and some even have background of studying abroad. Therefore, while conducting extensive dissemination, we should be targeted towards those groups. If the "Maker" urban culture can be widely distributed in colleges and universities, it will benefit a lot for its integration into the Shanghai culture. Third, it is necessary to promote "maker" urban culture construction from the perspective of construction of "business startup society".

5 Recommendations for "Maker" urban culture construction of Shanghai

5.1Openingthe"BigCloudMovement"platformtothesocietyandpromotinggenerationofgrassrootsmakersTo really introduce the concept of "Maker" to China, when the existing domestic infrastructure is not well established, it is required to make every effort to build a "Big Cloud Movement" platform and provide support facilities. On the one hand, for the maker group, it is difficult to obtain a lot of data and resources, which needs the government to play the role of resource allocation. For example, to open the database to the general public, there should be an effective measure for guaranteeing the information security. It is understood that Shanghai New Workshop Maker Space is located in Jing’an District, the new workshop proved that Jing’an has such soil or environment for us to regard Maker Space as an entertainment place. We hope that scientific and technological innovation is not exclusive right of Zhangjiang men, there should be Jing’an women, lift the human culture, and inject the human care into the intelligent hardware, to make hardware have soul.

5.2IntroducingsocialcapitalandhelpinginnovativegroupstotransformthescientificfindingsThe Maker phenomenon is the exploration of scientific and technological innovation in new economy. The generation of maker group, to a certain extent, marks the innovation culture (Maker Culture) with people-oriented, creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial culture as the symbol, which has excellent demonstration significance for guiding scientific and technological talents to start their own businesses, and promoting scientific research achievements and social employment. Besides, the maker group is still a small group in China, it still needs more care and support in environment creation and public service supply. From the perspective of development, the long-term development of Maker Culture needs great support of social forces, to encourage makers to absorb international innovation achievements and promote development of the maker activity at higher platform, in combination with demands of industrial transformation and upgrade in China. Particularly important, over the past few years, various areas have launched a series of activities for makers, providing them a broader platform and attracting more social resources to care about them. With the emergence of more and more maker spaces, some maker spaces inevitably remain at the stage of spending large amount of money. Many equipment, including large-scale 3D printers, milling machines, machine tools, and electronic equipment,etc., will not realize long-term support relying merely on investment of several initiators. These grassroots makers do not have conditions of large amount investment. As a result, it requires the introduction of social capital, in other words, through government guidance, to help these maker groups find an enterprise to realize product industrialization, and forming docking of makers and enterprises. Enterprises make investment, while makers provide technology and buy shares in the form of technology, to realize win-win objective and accordingly promote the transformation of scientific findings.

5.3BuildingShanghai"Maker"urbancultureandmakinginstitutionalinnovationTo further deepening the concept of "Big Cloud Movement", it is required to strengthen protection of intellectual property right of innovation. On the one hand, because behind the big data, there is the privacy of the group information. The cloud computing concerns the network security, and the standard for implementation of the platform economy is the high degree of customer information security. Mobile Internet also imposes higher requirements on the network carrier, of which some parts need establishing support system of intellectual property right, to guarantee the security of operating environment. On the other hand, as maker groups, their innovative and creative inspiration has characteristic of originality. At present, there is serious problem of plagiarism at current domestic market, which poses a great challenge for protection of intellectual property rights. Therefore, at the time of building "Maker" urban culture in Shanghai, it is required to firstly make innovation on the original systems, in other words, the institution should go first.

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