This article explores the multiple meanings of the concept of openness in the global maker movement. Openness is viewed as one of the key principles of the maker movement. As the global maker movement is a bricolage of diverse and situated practices and traditions, there are also many different interpretations and ways of practicing openness. We have explored this diversity with an integrative literature review, relying on the Web of Science™ database. We identified three interrelated but also, in part, mutually contested approaches to openness. Firstly, openness often refers to applying open hardware. Secondly, it is in many cases related to the inclusion and empowerment of various groups in making. Thirdly, openness appears to be seen as a means to pursue economic growth through increasing innovation activity and entrepreneurship. Our results also highlight the substantial barriers encountered by makers while aiming to open up their practices. These barriers include: value conflicts in which openness is overridden by other important values; exclusion of lower income groups from making due to a lack of resources; and difficulties in maintaining long-term activities. The different meanings of openness together with the barriers create tensions within the maker movement while implementing openness. We propose that engaging in a reflexive futures dialogue on the consequences of these tensions can enhance the maker movement to become more open, inclusive and resilient.

This article locates itself at the interface of the innovation ecosystem approach and foresight methodologies. The need for writing this paper emerged from the notion that despite existing common praxis, there is a lack of academic studies combining these approaches simultaneously in a more profound sense. The study adapts the perspective of how foresight can assist in the development of innovation ecosystems. As a constructive study, the aim is to foster revealing the potential that foresight can have for the innovation ecosystem development in both theoretical and practical sense. Foresight approach and its methods offer anticipatory mindset and practical tools for developing and steering of ecosystem life cycle, keeping in mind that an ecosystem is not static but evolving system. For the foresight, the relevance of this article emerges from emphasising the viewpoint of stakeholders, which may generate wider and more engaged involvement of different stakeholders in foresight processes. As an outcome, the paper presents a model called the foresight wheel, which consists of three interrelated elements of ‘Thinking beyond immediate cooperating’, ‘Enabling continuous futures dialogue’ and ‘Building ecosystem futures’ capabilities’. The empirical reflection of this paper relies on observations achieved in an H2020-funded research project, in which both innovation ecosystems and foresight frameworks were applied as part of cybersecurity workshops organised in three Asian countries.