# Keynote Case Study: IFC / World Bank Group — Manufacturing Opportunity Was Shifting to the Fast
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The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, brought me to Marrakesh to headline its 2nd Global Manufacturing Conference. The audience included government ministers, business leaders and manufacturing executives focused on a fundamental question: Where will the next generation of manufacturing growth come from? My message was that the answer would increasingly be shaped by speed. The manufacturing world was moving away from an era in which scale alone determined advantage. New technologies were reducing the cost of experimentation. 3D printing was moving from novelty toward mainstream use. Rapid prototyping was shortening the distance between an idea and a physical product. New materials were creating new design possibilities. Crowdfunding and distributed capital were giving smaller innovators access to resources that once belonged only to large organizations. And the ability to learn, iterate and move quickly was becoming just as important as the ability to manufacture at scale. That was particularly important for emerging economies. Historically, many manufacturing regions competed through labor cost, natural resources or proximity to markets. The next opportunity was different. Technology was lowering the barriers to participation. A smaller manufacturer could now conceive of an idea, prototype it, test it and improve it far faster than in the past. Innovation centers no longer had to emerge only where the largest industrial companies were located. They could emerge wherever talent, technology, capital and speed came together. That created a significant opportunity across Africa and other emerging regions. The keynote was built around several major shifts: Rapid Prototyping. Product development was becoming more iterative, allowing manufacturers to test ideas earlier and with less capital at risk. 3D Printing. Additive manufacturing was changing assumptions about tooling, production runs, customization and where products could be made. Distributed Innovation. Smaller companies and entrepreneurs increasingly had access to technologies once available only to major industrial organizations. New Materials. Advances in materials science were creating new products, new manufacturing methods and new competitive possibilities. Skills Acceleration. Manufacturing capability increasingly depended on access to rapidly changing technical and digital skills. Emerging Innovation Centers. The future of manufacturing innovation would not necessarily be concentrated in the same countries or cities that dominated the past. Before the conference, IFC interviewed me about the trends I would bring to the stage. One question asked what frustrated manufacturers most. My answer was simple: The speed of change. The future belongs to those who are fast. That is particularly true in manufacturing because the economics of experimentation have changed so dramatically. In the old world, you committed large amounts of capital to design, tooling and production, then hoped the market responded. In the emerging world, you can prototype rapidly, learn quickly and change direction before committing at scale. That makes experimentation cheaper. It makes innovation more accessible. And it creates an opportunity for regions that might previously have been excluded from large-scale industrial development. The important question for the IFC audience was therefore not simply: Where will factories be located? It was: Where will the capability to innovate fastest be located? That is a much more consequential question. Manufacturing opportunity increasingly follows talent, connectivity, experimentation and speed. For emerging economies, that means the future is not simply about competing with the industrial infrastructure of the past. It is about building the innovation capability required for the future. My challenge to the audience in Marrakesh was the same framework I have used with organizations around the world: Think big. Start small. Scale fast. Because in the next era of manufacturing, the greatest advantage may not belong to the organization or country with the largest industrial base. It may belong to the one that can learn, adapt and move the fastest.

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Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2019/11/keynote-case-study-ifc-world-bank-group-manufacturing-opportunity-was-shifting-to-the-fast/