I am pledging $30 to this:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-engineering-toy-for-girls

What that means is that I am buying a toy that currently has no value stream, has only been prototyped once, and has virtually no overhead (one person: the designer/inventor).

This takes JIT to another level. Instead of making product to order, this is making the business to order. This could eliminate so much overall waste from society it is potentially amazing.

I remember a banker whose expertise was deciding what small businesses to invest in explaining to me that 9 out of 10 of the businesses his bank invested in ultimately failed. If kickstarter is the future, the only capital lost on those 9 failed ventures will be the cost of design and initial marketing to make the webpage. That alone has the potential to have a serious effect on our economic future.

When people start realizing that the risk of starting a business is so much less however is when the potential is astronomical. That’s when there is potential for a renaissance of sorts.