NPR’s “Planet Money” is very often very interesting, but something on their Nov 27 broadcast about “hoverboard” design and manufacture caught my interest especially: at about 7:25, they talk about how Shenzhen’s small, agile factories don’t keep their designs as trade secrets. Instead, they make them freely available, so that their [potential] customers can easily see if the factory’s products will work with their design, or how it might be altered to work better, or for incorporation into their design from the get-go. Also, because their peer factories are also publishing their designs, a factory can design its products to incorporate or interoperate well with the products of those other factories. Also also, you can pull good design elements in from other factories’ designs, just as those other factories can pull in elements of your factory’s designs and make their products incorporate or interoperate well with your products! Interesting to hear the “bazaar” model of an open marketplace of free designs operating at such a large scale!