Introduction of Shenzhen Open Innovaiton Lab | Intopreneur

Due to the I get from the Open & User Innovation course, I got a lot of passion about finding innovation stuff. Wahen I went back to China during this Christmas, I went to Shenzhen, the most dynamic and innovative city of China. Fortunately, I have a lot of chance to get close to the new innovation environments. SZOIL is one of them.

SZOIL refers to Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab, established by SIDA(Shenzhen Industrial Design Association) and Maker Collider, is a space and platform for worldwide makers to communicate and cooperate. SZOIL is also the first Fab Lab in Shenzhen authorized by MIT CBA as a research and development partner of FabLab 2.0. SZOIL embodies four functions including Fab Lab promotion and FabLab 2.0 research and development, innovation and entrepreneur education courses for makers, global maker service platform, and industry chain collaboration service. The lab dedicates in exploring the issues and developing solutions to connect the massive production ecosystem to small hardware startups so as to promote the international standing of Shenzhen in the development of digital intelligent hardware and manufacturing and build a future intelligent hardware Silicon Valley by combining new open source method and current manufacturing system in Shenzhen.

They do four kinds of things. First is Fab Lab establishment and solution, second is innovation and entrepreneur education courses, third is global maker service platform and the last is industrial chain collaboration service.

So what is Fab Lab? Fab Lab, advocated by MIT CBA, is a low-cost laboratory for people to make whatever they want by applying digital and simulation tools in it. In June 2015, SZOIL formally signed an agreement with MIT CBA, which became the first Fab Lab in Shenzhen jointly developed with CBA. In Fab 12 held in August 2016, Fab Foundation and SZOIL jointly displayed FabLab 2.0.

SZOIL provides the makers with standard digital manufacturing environment and innovation courses according to the needs of clients and links with the global Fab Lab network, and it designs the blueprint for the maker space in the aspects of space planning, standard equipment, innovation course, etc.

Open innovation is the future of innovation, building open labs to the world makes a great benefit not only to the creaters but also for all the people who use their product.  It can reduce cost of conducting research and development. At the same time, make potential for improvement in development productivity and incorporation of customers early in the development process. Open innovation also increase in accuracy for market research and customer targeting, has a potential for synergism between internal and external innovations. I believe that both China and Sweden would benefit a lot of their openness to innovations.

In Stockholm, there are also quite amout of open labs.

kth open lab: https://www.kth.se/en/samverkan/arenor/open-lab-1.523140

oepnlab: http://openlabsthlm.se/