The Custom Jewelry Revolution How 3D Printing is Taking Over in the U.S.

Digital fabrication methods have lately attracted a lot of interest. Long utilized for fast prototyping, this technology also known as additive manufacturing or 3D printing is also progressively being embraced for production uses. Three-dimensional printing has been proposed to start a fresh industrial revolution The Economist, and to have disruptive consequences in the next years Manyika et al.Manufacturers of 3D printers are expanding

quickly, and their technologies find use in many sectors, including jewelry, dental implants, orthopedics and components for the aerospace and automobile sectors. Studies of how businesses move to using 3D Printing for production purposes are currently rare as it has only been utilized for manufacturing in more recent years and more empirical explanations of how

and why an industry chooses 3D Printing for use are much needed.Previous studies on innovation have shown that technical development usually causes competitive turbulence and could modify the structure of an industry (Schumpeter, 1936). An increasing amount of research has looked at how extreme technology change influences the dynamics between

Incumbent companies and new ones Historical examples

include mechanical refrigeration displacing ice harvesting companies, typewriter manufacturers being toppled by competitors in the transition to personal computers and companies producing analog radios missing out on the shift to transistor radios (Henderson and Clark, 1990). More recent cases include the disk drive sector (Christensen, 1997), the

camera sector and the continuous change from analog CCTV to digital, internet-based video surveillance (Sandström, 2011). The move from photochemical film to digital imaging mostly explains Eastman Kodak's bankruptcy in early 2012.In that material is added layer by layer rather than subtracted, 3D printing is technologically different from previous production

techniques Sometimes technologies requiring new abilities and performance criteria cause changes in competitiveness (Tushman and Anderson, 1986; Christensen, 1997). In those situations where the demand for variation is very strong but subtractive manufacturing techniques have been too expensive to achieve, 3D printing is fast being accepted. In this 2006-2007. Unlike in other sectors, where adoption is still developing, it is thus feasible to do

View 3D printing seems to show certain disruptive characteristics

since it offers fresh approaches of generating value. Whether 3D printing will have any disruptive impact on manufacturing sectors is, however, both theoretically and experimentally unknown.This paper therefore serves two purposes: first, it offers an empirical picture of how and why a sector embraced 3D printing for manufacturing; second, it investigates under what

conditions this technology might lead to industrial instability and competitive shifts. This is accomplished by means of a historical case study of how the worldwide hearing aid market embraced 3D printing for manufacturing hearing aid shells in the pe level. Fascinatingly, the empirical evidence does not imply that the advent of 3D printing has had any significant effect

on the competitive environment of the hearing aid market.ince they gain from economies of scale and resource control not possessed by newcomers, the hearing aid sector is very intentive over entrant companies. In those situations when a technology discontinuity renders the value of incumbent technological competencies useless, it has been suggested Further substream of research on the curse of the incumbent has looked at the influence of the

Surroundings of a company Many of the ideas put forward

in the previ-destruction and architectural innovation have been implemented in a similar companies had grown up and applied the technology across all aspect of their operations byl discontinuities could have equally negative effects on suppliers or customers of a company thereby generating inertia. Regarding a firm's co-opetitors that is, suppliers partners a retroactive research and investigate the outcomes of lied the technology across all aspect of

alliance partnersstated that technological development which lowers the value of co-opetitors and established ties will negatively impact incumbents. Other researchers have examined how incentives vary between entrants and incumbents, contending that an asymmetry of incentives created by established, successful industries favors entrant companies using 3D printers are more than 10 million hearing aid shells. Most of the hearing aid

market of an incumbent determines the way resources are allocated. As such, established companies find it difficult to create technology not first sought for by their present market. In this sense, technologies that first underperform but add additional performance criteria can be considered as disruptive. On the other hand, innovations meant to fit the present market of an existing company can be considered as sustainable. Therefore, one of the unique a

Conclution

Characteristics of disruptive technologies is their lack demandamong the clientele of a company. Christensen claims that disruptive technologies are difficult to create as apparently rational resource allocation systems usually support sustaining technology. hence entrant companies will knock them down nnovations that deviate from accepted product architectures could also be equally destructive for established companies (Henderson and Clark, 1990).

For established companies, innovations occurring on a component level without changing the overall product architecture usually easier to handle.Clearly, the effect of a technology discontinuity on the technical capacity of incumbent companies determines the performance of the company greatly. Since a new technology has already shifted its operations to utilize 3D printing, its impact on incumbent non-technical sting cases is yet unknown. Already produced