The 360 Innovation Lab occupied a ground-floor space in Graz that had previously been a print shop. The ceiling was too low for tall people. The heating was temperamental. The front door stuck in winter. It was, by every objective measure, not an impressive space.
It was the most productive environment I’ve ever worked in.
The 360 Innovation Lab operated from around 2018 to 2021. In that time, it hosted workshops, prototype sessions, hack events, and quiet afternoons where people sat at tables with soldering irons and CAD software and the specific kind of silence that means real work is happening. It wasn’t a co-working space — there were no monthly memberships or espresso machines. It was a place where ideas became physical objects, and where the gap between “I have a concept” and “I have a prototype” shrank from months to days.
Running the lab taught me things about innovation that no conference, book, or consulting engagement ever could. Because the lab wasn’t theoretical. It was a room where people built things with their hands, and the things either worked or they didn’t, and the lessons arrived not as abstract principles but as physical evidence.
The Proximity Effect
The most important thing about the lab was who was in it. On any given Tuesday, you might find a mechanical engineer prototyping a bicycle component next to a food scientist developing packaging for artisanal cheese next to a software developer building an IoT sensor for vineyard monitoring.
These people had nothing in common professionally. They didn’t work in the same industry, serve the same market, or use the same tools. But they were physically close, working on their respective problems in the same space, and the cross-pollination that happened naturally — a question asked across the table, a technique observed in passing, a material suggested by someone working on an entirely different problem — produced innovations that no single-discipline team could have generated.
The bicycle engineer’s component problem was solved by a technique the food scientist mentioned from packaging design. The IoT developer’s enclosure challenge was resolved using a material the engineer had rejected for his own project but which was perfect for a smaller application. None of these connections were planned. They happened because the people were in the same room.
This proximity effect is the physical-world version of diffuse thinking. When diverse inputs are present in the same space, the brain makes connections it couldn’t make in isolation. The lab was a diffuse-thinking environment built for groups rather than individuals.
What I Learned About Prototyping Speed
The lab had a 3D printer, a laser cutter, basic electronics equipment, and hand tools. Not a million-euro facility — maybe EUR 15,000 in equipment total. But the availability of those tools changed the innovation speed for everyone who used them.
Before the lab, a founder with a physical product idea would spend weeks finding a prototyping service, sending specifications, waiting for delivery, discovering the prototype didn’t match the concept, revising specifications, and repeating the cycle. Each iteration took two to four weeks. Three iterations took two to three months.
In the lab, the same founder could go from concept to physical prototype in an afternoon. Print it. Hold it. Test it. Discover the flaw. Redesign. Reprint. Three iterations in three days instead of three months.
This speed differential changed not just the timeline but the ambition. When prototyping is slow and expensive, you prototype cautiously — one design, carefully researched, thoroughly planned. When prototyping is fast and cheap, you prototype promiscuously — five designs, quickly tested, rapidly filtered to the one that works.
The Ship It Ugly principle crystallized in the lab. I watched dozens of founders go from “I need to perfect this before I show anyone” to “let me print this, test it, and show someone today.” The tool removed the friction, and removing the friction changed the behavior.
The Failure Museum
One wall of the lab was covered with failed prototypes. Not metaphorically — literally. We pinned failed prints, broken components, and rejected designs to a corkboard and labeled them with the lesson each failure taught.
“Material too brittle at 2mm thickness.” “Hinge joint fails after 200 cycles.” “User grip requires minimum 40mm circumference.” Each failure was specific, documented, and visible. Anyone working on a similar problem could scan the wall and learn from someone else’s mistake without repeating it.
The failure museum served two purposes. First, practical: it accumulated institutional knowledge about materials, techniques, and design constraints. Second, cultural: it normalized failure as a data source rather than a shame event. When your failed prototype is displayed publicly alongside twenty others, the failure stops feeling personal and starts feeling procedural.
This culture of productive failure directly informed how I later approached product development at Vulpine, where obsessive testing meant producing hundreds of failures to find each success, and how I structured the Startup Burgenland program, where founders were encouraged to fail fast and document what they learned.
The Community Effect
The lab attracted a specific type of person: builders. Not planners, not talkers, not networkers. People who wanted to make things with their hands. This self-selection created a community with a shared value — making things — that transcended industry, age, and background.
A retired engineer in his sixties worked alongside a university student in her twenties. A healthcare professional prototyped a patient monitoring device next to an artist creating kinetic sculptures. The shared value of building created a social cohesion that no formal networking event could replicate.
From this community came four startups that I’m aware of, including the early seeds of what became Vulpine Creations. The lab was where I first understood the materials, the manufacturing processes, and the prototyping workflows that later became central to our product development. It was also where I met people who became collaborators, advisors, and friends.
What Innovation Actually Is
Before the lab, my understanding of innovation was shaped by consulting — strategic frameworks, competitive positioning, market analysis. Innovation was a concept discussed in meeting rooms and documented in presentations.
The lab taught me that innovation is a physical act. It’s cutting, printing, soldering, testing, breaking, and rebuilding. It’s the moment when the thing you imagined meets the material world and the material world pushes back. It’s the adjustment you make when the prototype doesn’t work — not the theory of why it should work, but the specific, pragmatic fix that makes it actually work.
Thinking in systems is important. But systems are built from components, and components are built from materials, and materials only reveal their properties when you work with them directly. The lab closed the gap between abstract systems thinking and concrete physical reality.
The 360 Innovation Lab closed its doors when COVID delivered the final blow — funding dried up, the San Francisco costs were untenable, and the company collapsed. I shifted focus to Vulpine and eventually Startup Burgenland. The space went back to being a ground-floor commercial unit with a low ceiling and a sticky front door. But the principles that emerged from it — proximity, speed, productive failure, community, and the physical nature of innovation — remain the foundation of everything I build.
Innovation doesn’t happen in a strategy session. It happens in a room where people build things, break things, and build them again.
