In the movie, Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones character suggests to Kevin Costner that if he builds a 
baseball field in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa that people will come. The same sentiment is behind a great many businesses: If you build a great product, people will come.
What happens, however, when people can build their own products. Does the idea sound fanciful? If so, I’d invite you to read this post on the emerging field of rapid prototype manufacturing or this article which I wrote on my other blog, Jump the Curve.
Dr. Adrian Bower, an academic researcher from the University of Bath, has developed a device — which he has dubbed the RepRap — that can "print" a variety of useful 3D objects, including door handles, sandals and coat hooks.
Such items might not strike you as being particularly revolutionary, however, according to this recent article, Bowyer has tweaked the machine so that it can print out its own parts. In other words, one RepRap can print another RepRap — ad infinitum.
At a minimum, this will require a great many manufacturers to "unlearn" their current way of doing business. As Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager at Google, recently said, "Think of RepRap as a China on your desktop."
