While many cities and states are fighting to subsidise declining businesses others are becoming hubs of future industries. The story of Leuven and 3D printing is one of the latter.
A great article and accompanying presentation from Reuters illustrates some of the possibilities with 3D printing technologies.
Most of the article revolves around the Belgian company Materialise whose CEO, Wilfried Vancraen, has been a pioneer in 3D printing.
An interesting upshot of Materialise’s development is how the company’s hometown, Leuven, is promoted by the firm as the ‘world capital of beer and 3D printing.’
Calling yourself the ‘World Capital of Beer’ is a big – and one suspects risky – call in Belgium so it’s not surprising that the town itself doesn’t use the tagline.
Being the world capital of 3D printing though does have some allure of Leuven being able to build itself into one of the world’s hub for the new technology.
Those hubs are a feature of every industrial revolution – whether it’s Silicon Valley and the manufacturing centres of South East China today or the English ironworking and cotton milling hubs of the 18th Century.
For governments looking at attracting job creating industries, instead of desperately trying to attract the old industries of the 20th Century it might be worthwhile to consider what the community has to offer the business leaders of this millennium.
Leuven may or may not become one of the world hubs of 3D printing, but at least the city has a chance – those bidding for car factories, movie productions or prisons are destined to decline even if their bids succeed.
Beer pouring image courtesy of dyet and sxc.hu
1st, Belgium isn’t the world capital for 3D printing though maybe with beer as there are many countries developing 3D printing. For example-dutch architects to build the world’s 1st 3d printed house – http://www.cnet.com.au/architects-to-build-worlds-first-3d-printed-house-339343055.htm. 3D printing will also be used for prescription drugs & so on – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/3d-printer-drugs-prescription-pills_n_1449280.html. Lastly, US is the leader for these things including 4D printing – http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/the-next-big-thing-4d-printing/13898
Thanks Rohit, great links. It’s interesting the new business models that are developing in this space.
What I’m getting at isn’t whether Leuden will be a global 3-D printing centre – of which there will probably be a few – but that these cities are becoming hubs while many governments are wasting their money on yesterday’s industries. The Australian government’s continued funding of a unviable vehicle industry is a good example.