Sustainability of Makerspaces: Developing a Framework for Sustainable Community Innovation Centers

Abstract

Innovation can play a vital role in economic freedom. However, innovation activities at the community level face numerous obstacles. Spaces like makerspaces and fabLabs vitalize innovation, education, and entrepreneurship within communities. Nevertheless, scarce research addresses the transient nature of these spaces; their premature cession adversely affects their members and the surrounding community. In this study, we develop a novel sustainability framework for community innovation centers through the lens of makerspaces that helps reveal when some centers remain open and meet their objectives and how others close and fail to do so. These centers possess economic and social growth potential, aligning with HCI’s mission to unlock human potential. Building on established ICT4D (Information and Communications Technologies for Development) frameworks, we studied makerspaces across the USA. The resulting framework highlights the importance of fostering a community through the interactions between people and resources, supported by an integrated management, process, and finance infrastructure. This work provides an understanding of how to foster sustainable innovation at the community level.