Innovation Makers

Innovation Makers: How Campus Makerspaces Can Empower Students to Change the World is the culmination of journalist and entrepreneurship educator Emi Makino''s studies into the best practices for creating makerspaces - an important but currently ailing aspect of helping student-age creators learn experientially. By producing real prototypes in controlled, professional environments with state-of-the-art equipment but without the strict guidance of university controls to hinder their progress, Makino has touched on a key resource currently lacking not just in Japan, but around the globe.

Makino relates some of the greatest stories of student-led projects that only survived because of makerspaces, including Jane Chen''s team, which has saved hundreds of thousands of children across eleven countries with their Embrace blanket.

Makino creates the first real prescription for building makerspaces properly by studying those that have succeeded, such as Hongo Tech Garage. She addresses the reasons commercial-run makerspaces have largely failed, and why it behooves governments and educational facilities to work together to ensure that they become readily available so more young geniuses can help change the world for the better.