I know a lot has been written lately about the rise of crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter and the like, which is why I enjoyed Chris Anderson’s article on this new era of manufacturing. He touches on some major points, most notably that yes, while we are mainly an economy that relies on high end services, manufacturing is still the base that needs to be present in order to make sure everything hums along properly. Most people in the country cannot become consultants or bankers or doctors or lawyers, yet they still need fulfilling jobs and people still need/want things.

The Maker Movement takes manufacturing and makes it widely and broadly accessible for anyone to create and make goods with minimal (relatively speaking to the past) cost, something that will need to happen if we want to ensure a strong manufacturing base in the future. We all know that small businesses are the ones that keep the economy moving along, and I think the Maker Movement can become a tremendous opportunity for a lot of people. I still believe they are people in older manufacturing jobs that could benefit from this new access to capital, ideas and markets, who would better serve the economy by switching into this new market of making things at scale with minimal cost up front.

As long as we continue to invest in programs and services that help would be entrepreneurs grow and learn from each other (think local events like Meetups, online resources like Google’s new Entrepreneur center, other online web resources and the myriad SaaS services out there now to manage a business, etc.) we will start to see more and more innovation continue to happen at the lightning fast pace we have been accustomed to in the Internet era. And that is definitely a cause for celebration in a weak economy.