Abstract
This article explores the current modalities at play in respect of institutionalisation and
informal innovation
within maker communities in South Africa. A national scan in 2016-17 generated data on more than 20
maker communities across South Africa. The data provide insights into a number of management,
spatial and activity variables present in the practices of the maker communities and their members.
This article focuses on two of the dimensions found to be present when looking across the
management, spatial and activity variables: institutionalisation and informal innovation.
Institutionalisation is conceptualised as resulting in, and from: (1) formalisation of maker
communities' practices; (2) partnerships between maker communities and formal organisations; and
(3) embedding of maker communities in formal organisations. Informal innovation is conceptualised
as manifesting in: (1) constraint-based innovation; (2) incremental innovation; (3) collaborative
innovation; (4) informal approaches to knowledge appropriation; and (5) innovation in informal
networks/communities in informal settings. Our data show that since the emergence of the maker
movement in South Africa in roughly 2011, there has been an increase in institutionalisation of,
and within, maker communities. At the same time, we find that there continues to be a strong spirit
of informality in the communities, with most of the communities, including the relatively
more-institutionalised ones, actively seeking to preserve emphasis on informal-innovation
modalities. Our conclusion is that, in the present stage of evolution of the South African maker
movement, elements of institutionalisation appear be largely offering synergies, rather than
tensions, with the ethos of informal innovation. Such synergies are allowing South African maker
communities to play an intermediary, semi-formal role, as mediating entities between formal and
informal elements of the country's innovation ecosystem.