Here’s some food for thought: What if, instead of always buying new products, it was the conventional practice to simply repair or upgrade existing ones? How might we create sustainable circular infrastructure and simultaneously democratize product development by bringing manufacturing closer to the consumer? More importantly, how can businesses ensure revenue and longevity if they’re giving away their designs for free?

As the EU sets new standards for the right to repair and sustainable product development, contemporary companies need new solutions to adapt. Open-Source Hardware (OSH) is an alternative and promising development practice with the potential to future-proof your offerings by giving customers more control of the products they purchase.

In this case collection, you meet five companies that have made profitable open-source hardware products that can serve as inspiration for your own experimentations with open-source hardware. We’ve also made a blank case template for you to fill out and use in your own open-source business development journey.

Each case shows the company’s customer groups over a timeline of three phases, and defines:

• Early innovators, early adopters, and mainstream customers
• The key offering to each customer group
• The reason why these customers buy the product

We then use color codes to show which revenue streams, aka. Strategic Approaches, the company is mixing together to gain commercial success.

We hope these open companies will inspire you to collaborate with the global creative community and reinvent how we create products and services.

All information has been approved by the case companies.