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If necessity is the mother of invention, then capacity must be its father. Inventors in the developing world may have plenty of ideas, but without the right tools, these remain sketches on paper.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr Neil Gershenfeld and Bakhtiar Mikhak are working to place the tools of invention into the hands of ordinary people through personal fabrication laboratories. Each $20,000 'fab lab' contains a collection of tools for cutting, connecting and computing, which can machine objects down to microns, a fraction of the size of a hair.

The first fab labs are now in place around the world giving life to such innovations as sensors to measure the fat content of milk in India; cassava grinders and agricultural tools in Ghana; and radio collars and wireless networks for tracking animal herds in Norway.

Gershenfeld aims to turn fab labs into self-sustaining operations that can fuel local economies, meet local needs and enable further innovation. He says that fab labs could be 'matters of survival' in developing countries - developing 'locally appropriate solutions', producing them on the spot and sharing them globally.

www.web.media.mit.edu/neilg/neil