THE BIG IDEA
40 Harvard Business Review May 2015
Richard D’Aveni is the
Bakala Professor of Strategy
at Dartmouth College’s
Tuck School of Business.
IT’S HAPPENING, AND IT
WILL TRANSFORM YOUR
OPERATIONS AND STRATEGY
by Richard D’Aveni
Industrial 3-D printing is at a tipping point,
about to go mainstream in a big way. Most
executives and many engineers don’t realize
it, but this technology has moved well
beyond prototyping, rapid tooling, trinkets,
and toys. “Additive manufacturing” is
creating durable and safe products for sale to
real customers in moderate to large quantities.
HBR.ORG
May 2015 Harvard Business Review 41
The beginnings of the revolution show up in a 2014 PwC
survey of more than 100 manufacturing companies. At the
time of the survey, 11% had already switched to volume
production of 3-D-printed parts or products. According
to Gartner analysts, a technology is “mainstream” when it
reaches an adoption level of 20%.
Among the numerous companies using 3-D print–
ing to ramp up production are GE (jet engines, medi–
cal devices, and home appliance parts), Lockheed
of applications.” In 2014 sales of industrial-grade 3-D
printers in the United States were already one-third
the volume of industrial automation and robotic
THE BIG IDEA THE 3-D PRINTING REVOLUTION
