Introduction
In the years following the Second World War, America’s Bell System developed the innovation that would launch a third industrial revolution in the United States and soon after in the rest of the world. The Bell System’s switching innovation, the transistor, set in motion the single most far-reaching entrepreneurial sequence in modern history.[i] The digital revolution can be traced from the transistor, to the integrated circuit, to the internet and to a multitude of related innovations that are still today remaking political economies, societies, and cultures worldwide.[ii] The Entrepreneurial Multiplier in this case is very long, very complex and continuing to grow. The path of these sequences – charted by numerous historians and economists – is certainly tree-like. In manufacturing, distribution, and financial services, new enterprises continue to develop in the wake of the digital transformation. So too do smaller retail firms down to the level of the internet cafes. Even in some of the poorest and least developed societies in the world, wireless communications and the internet are changing the way people communicate, carry on economic activity, and engage with the world outside of their families, communities, and nations.[iii]
This recent burst of innovation has had important cultural, social, and political, as well as economic effects on the United States. In the aftermath of the New Deal of the 1930s and the wartime expansion of government controls in the 1940s, it appeared to Schumpeter and other sagacious intellectuals that the drift toward socialism and away from market-oriented capitalism and the entrepreneurial culture was inevitable.[iv] 
America’s European allies were headed down that path in the aftermath of the war. But then a formidable political and intellectual “re-formation” in America revived entrepreneurial values and again transformed the nation’s political setting.[v] That context continued to be characterized however, by formidable tensions between those in quest of equity and economic security and those Americans who emphasized the search for efficiency and for what Michael Lewis memorably labeled “the new new thing.”[vi] These tensions came to the surface and roiled American society in the years following the Great Recession of 2008.
Political and Cultural Struggle
We will briefly examine 3D printing, an innovation that could well become a general purpose technology and is today continuing to evolve in the United States, in Asia, and in several countries in Europe. As we do so, we are jumping into Wiki-History Land, where the factual base is skin-thin and the perspective stunted. After applying a simple “Media-Hype Discount” of 50%, we can at least chart some of the outlines of this sequence.
Those who have not been following 3D printing in the press and other publications can turn to Chris Anderson’s recent book, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, for a simple, non-technical explanation of the technology. As Anderson aptly observes, you can start by thinking about the laser jet printer that you probably use in your home or office. That machine is a two-dimensional printer. You put computer instructions in the printer, and it applies ink to the page as instructed. Your letter, chapter, or lecture comes out (one hopes) in finished form. Now imagine that you add a third dimension to the instructions and the machine extrudes plastic or metal instead of ink. You now have a 3D Printer. This is also called “additive manufacturing.” These machines are currently available in a variety of sizes, forms, and capabilities.
Charles W. “Chuck” Hull invented and patented the original machine in 1986, using an ultraviolet light beam to harden a light-sensitive liquid as it was applied, layer by layer, to make the product specified by the software. Hull founded 3D Systems to produce the machines and today it is one of the two largest companies in the industry.[vii] There are now various different techniques for shaping either plastic or metal (laser sintering and laser melting, for example) and all have taken computer assisted design (CAD) and computer assisted manufacturing (CAM) to a new level in which the printer actually makes the object you want to produce. It makes them one at a time. It makes them just as complex as your software design is. Some of the printers build up the object, layer by layer, from the plastic or metal they extrude. Others cut the object from the material. If you do not want to develop software instructions, you can put the object you want to copy in a 3D scanner that will produce the instructions you need.
Where is 3D Printing Being Used?
By 2020, GE plans to be producing more than 100,000 aviation parts using 3D Printing.[viii] Even after applying our hype discount, it is significant that firms like GE and Hewlett Packard (HP) have moved into the industry. HP announced (October 2014) that it would soon have available a 3D industrial printer that it claimed could cut costs by fifty percent while working ten times faster than existing machines.[ix] Like the early textile industry, 3D printing has produced a new system of manufacturing and a new machine-tool industry with substantial capabilities for further entrepreneurial development. There is currently interest in creating machines large enough to produce 3D automobiles.
As befits a relatively new industry in a new digital age in a very large, capital-rich America, funding for 3D entrepreneurial ventures has taken on new forms.[x] In addition to the traditional ways of funding entrepreneurship – mortgages, credit cards, the 3 Fs, and the post-WWII venture capital companies – businesses making 3D printers have turned to campaigns of so-called “crowdfunding.” This is a way of using the internet to collect small amounts of capital from a relatively large number of people who do not know each other. One of the “platforms” for crowdfunding is Kickstarter, which has been in business in the United States since 2009. Forty-one producers of 3D printers have gathered pledges of $18 million through Kickstarter and the amount of capital raised in this way is continuing to grow. Large firms such as GE and HP can depend on internal financing, but the startup producers have turned with apparent success to public campaigns to promote their innovations.[xi]
Will 3D Printing be a disruptive technology, à la Clayton Christensen?[xii] According to Lyndsey Gilpin, writing in TechRepublic, 3D will have a revolutionary impact on manufacturing in electronics, automobiles, jewelry, and military equipment, on medicine, and on many other aspects of production in the developed and 
the developing worlds. McKinsey Global Institute predicts that it will be a major factor in the global economy by 2025.[xiii] The global market for printers and services has been estimated at $2.2 billion in 2012 (the growth rate was 29% over the previous year).[xiv] In a report entitled The Search for Creative Destruction, investment firm Goldman Sachs focuses on three transforming technologies: big data solutions; software-defined networking; and 3D printing, which “is expected to continue on its path of rapid acceleration.”[xv] Projections vary, but the historical trend for the years 2007-2011 is impressive: there were 66 3D printers sold in 2007 and 23,265 sold in the latter year, a dramatic increase.[xvi]
Recent Developments
As Steven Leckart reported in 2013, Organovo was now able to print liver tissue. “Three factors,” he said, “are driving the trend: more sophisticated printers, advances in regenerative medicine, and refined CAD software. To print the liver tissue at Organovo,” Leckart said, “Vivian Gorgen, a 25-year-old systems engineer, simply had to click ‘run program’ with a mouse.” That product leaves Organovo a long way from making a fully functioning organ, but it is an astonishing step forward.[xx]
The extended, incredibly varied entrepreneurial sequences leading to these developments in bioengineering and the millions of other similar innovations in the third industrial revolution were taking place in a political and cultural environment that very recently appeared to be loaded against the entrepreneur. Despite the late twentieth-century rise of neo-liberalism, a mature American regulatory state was scrutinizing many forms of business behavior that had one hundred years ago been free of political control. In the wake of the Great Recession, a very active federal government and a very active array of non-governmental organizations now have available and are prepared to use vast amounts of information on the economy and the actions of particular businesses and individuals. There is a mounting interest in squeezing risk out of the financial system that funds the American brand of capitalism.[xxi] Class action lawsuits, opposition from environmental organizations, and an aggressive media impinge on private sector decisions that had once been easy to make on the basis of economic factors alone.[xxii] Entrepreneurial profits and inequality of income, wealth, and opportunity are central issues on America’s political agenda. A society nervous about the economic future seems on the surface less concerned about the opportunity to build wealth by developing new products and services, new sources of raw materials, new markets, and new styles of organization.
And yet, the rise of 3D printing and, indeed, the entire digital revolution indicate that entrepreneurship has not been choked off by a hostile culture and polity — the Wall Street Journal’s litany of laments notwithstanding.[xxiii] To the contrary, the adaptable entrepreneurs of 3D printing and all of the other digital innovations seem to be just as enthusiastic about change as were the early nineteenth-century founders of cotton-textile mills and machinery firms and the inventors and investors who built up the aluminum business in the early twentieth century. In the United States the incentives for entrepreneurship – an inherently risky undertaking in finance and industry – still apparently outweigh a cultural, media, and political environment increasingly focused on reducing risk in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and its global aftermath.[xxiv]
So too in the European Union, where neither the Great Recession nor the recent problems with mass immigration have deterred 3D entrepreneurs. In a case of near-perfect historical symmetry, the United States has sparked a 3D movement in Europe two centuries after Britain provided America with the essential ideas it needed to start its first industrial revolution. In Italy, where a well-established and talented array of designers exists, 3D caught on quickly. Milan, the current style center of Europe, became for a time the leading 3D city in the world. The highly specialized manufacturing enterprises of Northern Italy had been troubled for years by competition from China. The new 3D mode of production pumped new life into many of Italy’s small and medium-sized businesses. Exports are increasing. Entrepreneurial sequences are beginning to multiply: in addition to producing the machines and the raw materials (plastic filaments, for instance) used in 3D production, Italian businesses are making products ranging from furniture to shoes to eye glasses to medical materials and to automobile and airplane parts.[xxv]
Other European Union members are quickly catching up with the leaders: as one might expect, Germany has made strides in machine tools; and both German and British companies have partnered with firms from other nations in efforts to advance the technology and find new applications for 3D production.[xxvi] In Britain, public-private alliances have been popular. Renishaw, a British precision-measuring firm, has developed a 3D business in products ranging from aerospace to medical care.[xxvii] If there is, indeed, going to be a 3D revolution in manufacturing, it will certainly have global dimensions.
Notes
[i] Choi, “Manufacturing Knowledge in Transit.”
[ii] Several of the essays in Mowery and Nelson, eds., Sources of Industrial Leadership, are excellent guides, including: Langlois and Steinmueller, “The Evolution of Competitive Advantage in the Worldwide Semiconductor Industry,1947-1996,” 19-78; Bresnahan and Malerba, “Industrial Dynamics and the Evolution of Firms’ and Nations’ Competitive Capabilities in the World Computer Industry,” 79-132; and Mowery, “The Computer Software Industry,” 133-68. See also the essays in Clarke, Lamoreaux, and Usselman, eds., The Challenge of Remaining Innovative; especially pertinent are Lipartito, “Rethinking the Invention Factory,” 132-59; Adams, “Stanford University and Frederick Terman’s Blueprint,” 169-90; Usselman, “Unbundling IBM,” 249-79. See as well, Dosi and Galambos, eds., The Third Industrial Revolution in Global Business.
[iii] See, for instance, the three magnificent volumes by Castells on The Information Age. See also Russell’s excellent study of Open Standards and the Digital Age.
[iv] This was one of the central themes of Schumpeter’s most famous book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. See also Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, and Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. For an informative guide to the Great Depression’s impact on entrepreneurship see Lamoreaux and Levenstein, “Patenting in an Entrepreneurial Region during the Great Depression,” courtesy of the authors.
[v] Burgin, The Great Persuasion. For a review of the massive outpouring of literature on the emergence of a conservative trend in American politics after WWII see Kim Phillips-Fein, “Conservatism: A State of the Field,” 723-43.
[vi] Lewis, The New New Thing.
[vii] “3D Systems (DDD) Company Profile.” [Retrieved from]. The other major firm is Stratasys – see “About Stratasys.” [Retrieved from].
[viii] Whittaker, “General Electric on 3D Printing,” April 3, 2014. [Retrieved from].
[ix] Szal, “HP Unveils Industrial 3D Printer…,” November 17, 2014. [Retrieved from].
[x] The historical literature on industrial entrepreneurship has for the most part ignored financial innovations; in American business history, this can be traced largely to the influence of Alfred D. Chandler, whose paradigm focused on industrial production, not finance. We are grateful to Christopher L. Culp for a discussion of this anomaly in the literature. See, for instance, one of Culp’s many articles, “The Revolution in Corporate Risk Management,” 8-26. See also one of his post-2008 articles: “Syndicated Leveraged Loans During and After the Crisis and the Role of the Shadow Banking System.”
[xi] 3D hubs, 3D Printing Trends October 2014. [Retrieved from]. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reminded crowdfunding participants that entrepreneurial startups are risky. See “There’s No Refunding in Crowdfunding” (November 26, 2014). Shane, “Start Up Failure Rates: The Definitive Numbers,” at: [Retrieved from].
[xii] See p. 4 and note 7 above. For a spirited challenge to Christensen see Lepore, “The Disruption Machine.”
[xiii]. Gilpin, “10 industries 3D printing will disrupt or decimate.” [Retrieved from].
[xiv] “3D printing scales up,” The Economist (September 7, 2013).
[xv] This appears in the Goldman Sachs annual report for 2013. Several of the key 3D printer patents are expiring, making entry into the industry less expensive. 3ders.org. “Let the revolution begin: key 3D printing patent expires today,” November 17, 2014. [Retrieved from]. There is already an Open Source movement in 3D printing in an effort to eliminate other patent constraints.
[xvi] Yahoo Finance, as reported in “Maker Movement and 3D Printing: Industry Stats,” February 13, 2014. [Retrieved from].
[xvii] Groopman, “Print Thyself: How 3-D printing is revolutionizing medicine,” 78-85, provides an excellent review of recent developments with a minimum amount of hype.
[xviii] Duan, Hockady, Kang, and Butcher, “3D Bioprinting of Heterogeneous Aortic Valve Conduits with Alginate/Gelatin Hydrogels,” 1255-64. See also Crawford (ASME), “Creating Valve Tissue Using 3-D Bioprinting.” [Retrieved from]. The bladder is a relatively simple organ; the target is the liver, which is a very complex organ that performs many functions.
[xix] Griggs, “The Next Frontier in 3-D Printing: Human Organs.” [Retrieved from].
[xx] Leckart, “How 3-D Printing Body Parts Will Revolutionize Medicine.” [Retrieved from]. Autodesk, which has a Bio/Nano/Programmable Matter Group, is working with Organovo in developing new CAD programs for bioprinting. See “Making a bit of me,” The Economist, February 18, 2010.
[xxi] On the history of risk and uncertainty, see Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit; and more recently, Levy, Freaks of Fortune.
[xxii] Lipartito and Sicilia, Constructing Corporate America.
[xxiii] New York City just recently passed Milan, Italy, as the leading global “hot spot” for 3D printing, but for a different conclusion than ours, see Pisano and Shih, “Restoring American Competitiveness,” 2-13.
[xxiv] This is confirmed in Amorós and Bosma, The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 9 (GEM);” [Retrieved from]. The GEM studies are realistic about the high failure rates in entrepreneurial ventures. For evidence of an overall decline in recent new business creation in the United States see Fairlie, “Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, 1996-2013.” [Retrieved from].
[xxv] Salerno, “Luca Beltrametti: Stampa 3D, per le PMI grandi vantaggi,” (September 11, 2015), www. corrierecomunicazioni.it. Guerrini, “How do you get the biggest benefits from 3D printing?” (May 5, 2015), [Retrieved from]. Luna, “E’ italiana la super stampante 3D,” La Repubblica, September 15, 2015. “Italian 3D-Printing Company Creates Unique Furniture Combining Traditional Craftsmanship & 3D Technology,” 3DPrint.com. “Laser Specialists Form 3D Printing Joint Venture,” Metal Powder Report 69, 4 (July 2014).
[xxvi] “DMG Mori Presents an Additive Manufacturing Breakthrough,” [Retrieved from]. “3D Printing and 5-Axis Machining Combined in One Machine,” [Retrieved from].
[xxvii] UK Intellectual Property Office Patent Informatics Team, “3D Printing Report,” November 2013, [Retrieved from]. “UK National Strategy for Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing,” May 1, 2015. [Retrieved from].. Derek Korn, “Renishaw Opens New Innovation Center in the UK,” Modern Machine Shop, 88, 4 (September 2015), 48.
