A New Initiative Could Drive 3D Printing Applications

The new nFRONTIER Innovation Studio could open the door for many new projects using 3D printing.

The Berlin-based initiative intends to provide a platform for new product innovations. They explain:

“The company is a ground-breaking, impact-driven innovation studio accelerating the development and launch of industrial products – making the process faster, more successful, more digital and sustainable. Fueled by emerging technologies, benefitting from unique market insights and pioneering teams, and, crucially, using a proprietary A to L operating model, nFRONTIER has ambitions to re-shape today’s product creation patterns.”

I’d like to learn more about this mysterious “A to L” model.

But that aside, there’s a reason why I think there could be many 3D print applications running through this operation, and it has to do with who’s behind the project.

nFRONTIER was founded by three individuals:

• Daniel Buening, Chief Executive Officer
• Pervin Adiyaman, Chief Administrative Officer
• Dr. Stephan Beyer, Chief Commercial Officer

All have experience with startup companies, which is clearly aligned with nFRONTIER’s goals, but there’s another thing. Check out these previous roles:

• Daniel Buening, four years as Chief Innovation Officer at BigRep
• Pervin Adiyaman, three years as Investor Relations and Governance at BigRep
• Dr. Stephan Beyer, four years as CEO and CFO at BigRep and currently a director of SpEE3D

Based on the knowledge and experience of this trio, it’s very clear 3D printing technologies will be at the fore of nFRONTIER’s operations.

This is incredibly good news for the industry, as this provides a channel for those with ideas about 3D print applications to follow to launch. It also provides a platform where developers would be exposed to 3D printing in ways they would not in traditional startup ecosystems. They may or may not use 3D printing, but at the very least the technology will be given a fair chance of evaluation.

This means good things for BigRep — and other 3D printer manufacturers — in the future, because nFRONTIER might churn out startups that require additional use of 3D printing.

This concept could help break down one of the barriers to 3D print industry growth: applications. The technology has been there for quite a while now, but 3D printer manufacturers have for years spent efforts to identify profitable applications for their products.

In some cases they found them. BigRep, for example, found their niche in large-object prototyping. Others filled different niches, and some didn’t find a niche and disappeared.

nFRONTIER might be able to launch startups that create NEW applications for 3D printing that no one has thought of yet. If they grow to large scale, and certainly some will, that will push demand for 3D printing products, services, materials and skills.

Note: nFRONTIER’s website is up, but it has to be the strangest page format I’ve ever seen on the web.

Via nFRONTIER