I Make Therefore I Am

Oliver Reichenstein, of iA Inc., relays the centuries-old philosophy of Giambattista Vico and how he applies Maker's Knowledge in his approach to developing products.

Creating a truthful product requires full understanding, a back-and-forth between making and thinking which, again, takes time. And time is expensive. We build better what we understand, but understanding takes time and money. Learning means failing, and failing until we make it work.

To understand things, you need to make them.

Quality and innovation are slow and expensive because they are tiny things that come at the cost of long cycles of big repetitive failures. You can’t innovate without failing. You can’t fail without pain.

We may not all fully understand that products made thoughtfully over a long period of time hold the most precious gift inside: The gift of time. But we all feel it. Good products feel more real because someone put their time and energy into shaping them.

Thought and words matter but ultimately, truth shows in what we do. Factum comes from [the Latin] facere, to make. A fact is literally what is done.

Verum ipsum factum.