Episode Summary

“The future is going to be more like the past than it is the present. With AI taking over so many jobs, it will likely take over all jobs involving staring at a computer. The people that are actually making things—I think we’re just going to want more and more of it.”

Michael Korn spent 15 years being known as “the screen guy.”

He built KwickScreen—hospital screens that scaled massively during the pandemic. He worked in factories worldwide. He studied manufacturing at Cambridge and design and innovation at the Royal College of Art. He has lived the entire journey from prototype to a production-scalable business.

And the whole time, he kept asking: why does inventing have to be so lonely, so expensive, so gate-kept?

This conversation begins with a problem that most people never consider: you spend years at university with access to lathes, mills, welding equipment, and 3D printers—everything you need to create things.

Then you graduate. It’s gone. Now you’re in your shed with limited tools, alone. This is where most hardware inventions die.

Five minutes from Lewisham Station, behind big blue doors, Michael built what he wished existed when he started. Blue Garage is a microfactory, innovation hub, and maker space designed specifically for ambitious scale-up hardware businesses.

Not hobbyists. Not artists. The inventors who want to take something from the prototype stage through to a production-scale business.

The equipment list sounds like a maker’s wildest dream: 3-metre UV printers, CNC routers, a Zünd cutting bed, powder coating rooms, textiles labs, and electronics fabrication suites. Industrial tools that used to be locked away in universities or costly facilities are now accessible through a coworking-style membership model.

But here’s the tension Michael’s navigating: his friends from Cambridge and the Royal College of Art mostly got jobs at consultancies and banks. Higher salaries, higher status—at least it used to be. The number of people who actually go on to be inventors, start businesses, build jobs, and change things? Surprisingly few.

Bernie and Michael dig into why making things matters more now than ever—not despite AI, but because of it. When desk jobs are automated, when fast fashion collapses under Vinted and a repair culture emerges, and when we finally face the reality of pollution we’ve exported to someone else’s rivers, local manufacturing stops being nostalgic and starts being essential.

The episode explores the lean startup approach to hardware (you don’t need perfection to start), the importance of community in solo manufacturing journeys (motivation matters when you’re hitting walls), and why universities are both brilliant incubators and often struggle to help graduates continue making things after they leave.

This is for anyone who’s ever wanted to create something but didn’t know where to begin. For coworking operators curious about what innovation really looks like when it’s more than just a buzzword on a website.

For community builders who understand that the tools and equipment matter less than the network of people using them together.

You’ll leave understanding why manufacturing creates better jobs with multiplier effects that financial services never will, why the imperfection in the story often sells better than polished corporate products, and what happens when you give inventors the tools and community to do the work together instead of alone in their sheds.

Timeline Highlights

* [00:04 ] Bernie’s opening: “This is where most hardware inventions die” — the shed problem after university

* [01:34 ] Michael’s shift: “I’ve been known for 15 years as the screen guy, now I want to be the Innovation Hub Scale-up Accelerator Hardware Inventor guy”

* [02:23 ] Blue Garage defined: “A place where people who make things can exceed their expectations and ambitions”

* [03:25 ] The equipment list: lathes, mills, welding, 10-metre screen printing table, powder coating room, Zünd cutting bed

* [05:35 ] Michael’s origin: “Blue Garage is a place I wish were around when I started”

* [07:21 ] The loneliness of inventing: “There’s something intrinsically good about making stuff, but it’s been done on your own in your shed with limited tools”

* [08:38 ] The theory that changes everything: “The future is going to be more like the past than the present”

* [12:56 ] Bernie asks about cost: “Do you need £1,000 to make a prototype happen?”

* [14:30 ] The lean startup approach: “You can start selling based on a rough concept, then raise money to do it properly”

* [17:22 ] Bernie’s cruel joke: university friends go work for McKinsey or Deutsche Bank

* [18:49 ] The university gap: “They leave university and there’s nowhere to make things anymore”

* [21:37 ] Bernie’s breakthrough: “Blue Garage is one of the few places using the word ‘innovation’ that doesn’t make me roll my eyes”

* [24:29 ] Why manufacturing matters: “It creates jobs with a multiplier effect you don’t get in financial services”

* [28:11 ] Michael’s ambitions: helping 45 companies instead of the planned 10, thinking globally while building nationally

The Shed Problem Nobody Talks About

Every engineering and design student knows this feeling, even if they don’t recognise it until it’s too late.

At university, you have access to everything. Lathes, mills, 3D printers, laser cutters, welding equipment, electronics labs.

You design things, prototype them, and manufacture them. The facilities are included as part of your tuition and degree. You don’t necessarily appreciate it because you’re focused on your projects and deadlines.

Then you graduate.

Suddenly, all those tools are gone. You’re in your shed—or more likely, your flat—with maybe a drill and some basic hand tools. You have an idea for a product, something you want to develop, but the gap between what you can imagine and what you can actually make has become massive.

This is where most hardware inventions die. Not because the ideas are bad. Not because the inventors lack skill or motivation. But because inventing hardware is lonely, expensive, and gate-kept in ways software development never was.

Michael Korn lived this. He studied manufacturing at Cambridge, design and innovation at the Royal College of Art with Imperial. He had all the facilities, all the training. Then he was out in the world, building KwickScreen—hospital screens that would eventually scale massively during the pandemic—and doing it the hard way.

Starting in the corner of a friend’s factory in Pinner with just a lathe. Building relationships with manufacturers abroad. Learning the expensive, slow, frustrating process of taking something from prototype to production when you don’t have institutional resources backing you.

Blue Garage is Michael’s answer to the shed problem. It’s what he wished existed when he started 15 years ago. Not a maker space for hobbyists or artists—there are plenty of those.

A facility designed specifically for ambitious hardware businesses looking to scale. For individuals in the perilous gap between a university graduate with an idea and an established company with manufacturing capacity.

The model is simple: coworking-style membership gives you access to industrial equipment. You pay for your desk, you get the tools. The community is included.

Why the Future Looks More Like the Past

Michael has a theory that sounds nostalgic until you think about it for more than 30 seconds.

AI is coming for desk jobs. Not just some jobs, not eventually—it’s already taking over work that involves staring at computers and processing information. The jobs that survive will be those that AI can’t do: caring for people in hospitals and making physical things.

We’re going to want more manufacturing, more making, more local production. Not less.

This isn’t Luddite resistance to technology. It’s recognising what happens when you can’t see where things are made, who makes them, and what pollution they create. Right now, so much of that is hidden—happening in factories across the world, polluting rivers we’ll never see, affecting communities we’ll never visit.

The economy is fragile. When a ship gets stuck in the Suez Canal, we suddenly realise how many components go into everything we buy.

When a pandemic strikes, we recognise our vulnerable reliance on manufacturing done elsewhere. The whole system is more vulnerable than we pretend.

But there’s something deeper happening, too. The fastest-growing clothing brand is Vinted. People buying from each other, repairing things, fixing them up. Bernie’s 14-year-old son is making money finding vintage Ralph Lauren shirts and flipping them on Vinted. Fast fashion is facing an existential crisis, as customers are increasingly opting to repair and reuse rather than consume new products.

This shift creates space for local manufacturing to become economically viable again. When people want to know where things are made, who made them, what the environmental cost was—that’s a market opportunity for UK-based hardware businesses that can tell those stories honestly.

Michael’s betting everything on this shift. Blue Garage isn’t preparing for a nostalgic return to the past—it’s building infrastructure for a manufacturing renaissance driven by technology, environmental awareness, and economic necessity.

The people most likely to lead this? University graduates with technical skills and no access to equipment. Inven