For quite some time we and others have been talking about and helping companies understand how the Internet – and the way the Internet is being build – is changing business and the way we work forever.
We have been stressing how the way the Internet is build and the easy-to-use tools and software have driven the cost not only to publish, but to manufacture, distribute and collaborate – the cost of innovation (as Joi Ito describes it) – down remarkably. It’s made us all all (potential) publishers and innovators.

We have been talking about how complete industries, like the music industry and the news industry, are falling apart and being build again in complete different ways by some young entrepreneur. That it’s never been easier to build and try a new product, service or business and to modify it “in mid air”. Quoting Joi Ito again he writes that:

“(…) it is now usually cheaper to just try something than to sit around and try to figure out whether to try something. The map is now often more complex and often more expensive to create than to trying to figure it out as you go.”

Although, these things still needs repeating to most companies, the notion has been that these changes are mainly related to the web-based companies, software or digital products. These areas have been mostly related to communication or marketing, perhaps even to some “branding disguised as user-driven innovation” effort. It has not been related to the overall business strategy nor the growth or survival of the company as such.

I believe this will change very soon and that the traditional physical goods companies are up next. Not related to marketing or communication but related to their core business. In his post from earlier today, Joi Ito, is pointing to the emergence of community of hardware hackers and open hardware designs. He anticipates “an explosion of grass-roots innovation around hardware” and draws parallels to the early-Internet developers writing the open standards and open source software for the Internet.

Last week, Berg London, a rather small (atleast compared to your traditional hardware production/sales/distribution company of today) launched Berg Cloud and its first in a series of hardware products, a printer called Little Printer, that will connect with other products via the Internet.
A month ago, the small Berlin-based start-up Changers launched its company and hardware product which gives everybody a easy way to charge digital devices using sunlight and (eventually) obtain energy freedom.

Seems like the barriers of developing, manufacture and distributing physical goods are disappearing in the same way it have with digital products and services. We find this development interesting. We are doing some digital/physical stuff in the CBI project and in “the Farm” project as well and – as part of our research and work – we are talking to lots of really intelligent and hands-on people these days. As a consequence, these are not the first, nor the last words on the blog about how the Internet will change the industries of physical goods.

If you know of any examples or cases of projects/start-ups/products or if you have your own ideas/opinons on the subject, please share in the comment fields below.