Commonwealth Conversations: Mass Innovations

The Massachusetts Creative Economy

On September 22, 2011, Massachusetts Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Greg Bialecki announced the appointment of Helena Fruscio to the position of Creative Economy Industry Director for the Commonwealth. This is great news for the many people who urged the Patrick-Murray Administration to continue its strong support for the creative economy in Massachusetts. Helena has been widely praised for her leadership as Director of Berkshire Creative in western Massachusetts since 2009. She has also has provided excellent leadership and input into the work of the Creative Economy Council and, more recently, as a gubernatorial appointee to the Economic Development Planning Council.  That work also gives her a running head start into the issues that face creative businesses across the state. Helena's priorities include working with the Massachusetts Creative Economy Council to aggregate governmental, non-governmental, regional, and private resources that are available to the creative industry statewide. Helena also hopes to enhance the connectivity of the industry through the use of social networking, this blog, and other internet tools. We look forward to working with her when she starts to work on October 24, 2011. 

With Helena’s appointment, this is also a good time to take a look at what we’ve accomplished in the Creative Economy over the past few years.  Most people following this blog know the incredible difference that the former Creative Economy Industry Director, Jason Schupbach, made during his time with the Patrick-Murray Administration.  He established the agenda, network and enthusiasm that catalyzed our work. 

In the past year and half, we’ve continued to make progress.  Here are a few of the most notable accomplishments: 

1. The Design Industry Group of Massachusetts (DIGMA) has held two major conferences, Design Means Business at Reebok and MassMade at Gillette.  The conferences brought together leading figures in the design industry with business leaders, manufacturers and policy makers to envision how to strengthen the state’s economic competitiveness by leveraging the world-class presence of our nearly 48,000 design professionals in Massachusetts.
2. Becker College, with the support and assistance of Lieutenant Governor Murray, and through him Housing and Economic Development and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, has launched the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDigi) to accelerate the growth of the state’s competitive and growing interactive games industry.  MassDigi recently received a $500,000 competitive award from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, which is tremendous validation of their progress to-date.
3. The Patrick-Murray Administration has sustained a high-level of support for the creative organizations through the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Cultural Facilities Fund.  The fund received $7 million in FY 2011 and has received $14 million overall since a reauthorization of the fund in 2008. 
4. Finally, the Massachusetts Legislature provided terrific leadership in passing legislation authorizing the creation of state-designated Cultural Districts in municipalities in the state.  The program is administered by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and has long been sought by artists and municipalities as a means of focusing attention and resources to growing neighborhoods with established cultural assets and organizations.

A message from Governor Deval Patrick to Massachusetts College Students

Students of Massachusetts,

My path to Massachusetts may be similar to your own. I'm originally from elsewhere, the South Side of Chicago. I came here as a teenager when a program called “A Better Chance” offered me just that – a chance to attend school. I am the first person in my family to attend college, and have had a varied and exciting career since.

Massachusetts is my home now, and has been for most of the last 40 years. I didn't pursue my current job because elected office is my career, and I certainly knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I wanted to serve because of my gratitude to the Commonwealth for all the hope and life-changing opportunity I have been given here.

As students here, you already know that Massachusetts offers the very best educational experience in the world. But you may not know that school is just the beginning of all we have to offer. This state is a great place to live and work. We’re adding jobs faster than 47 other states (nearly 65,000 new jobs since December 2009), and climbing out of recession faster and stronger than the rest of the country. We lead the Nation in student achievement and health care. And we have an unparalleled quality of life, with diverse and beautiful people and regions and great cultural attractions.

The Commonwealth is also a great place to start a business. In its 2010 edition of America's Top States for Business, CNBC ranked Massachusetts in the top five nationally for business competitiveness. And we have an unparalleled entrepreneurial spirit -- which is why for the second year in a row, Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute ranked Massachusetts at the top in its annual Competitiveness Report.

So here’s my point: we want you to stay here.  Business, academic and government leaders from across the state have come together to organize a  “Stay Here” campaign, a concerted and collaborative effort to show you the opportunities that Massachusetts has to offer and to persuade you to stay here when school is done. You can learn more about it at www.massitsallhere.com/stayhere.

You are the Commonwealth’s most valuable resource. Your future is bright. Let’s together make ours brighter. Stay here!

Sincerely,

 

Governor Deval Patrick

 

Innovation Month Proclamation from Governor Deval Patrick

The following is the full text of a proclamation by Governor Deval L. Patrick

 

Whereas Innovative ideas start here. For almost four hundred years, Massachusetts’ social, cultural, technological, scientific, manufacturing, and design innovators have advanced the Commonwealth’s economic prosperity and quality of life.

Whereas Massachusetts is a global leader in the innovation economy, from life sciences to robotics, from advanced manufacturing to clean energy, from education to digital technology, and everything in between.

Whereas Massachusetts is the home of hundreds of firsts and bests, from boasting the highest venture capital investment and NIH funding per capita of any place in the world, to the invention of radar, Rock Band, and Roomba.

Whereas Throughout this month, through a series of programs and events, the Commonwealth’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and creators will showcase our innovation and collaboration, and encourage new intellectual capital to the Commonwealth.  

Now, Therefore, I, Deval L. Patrick, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, do hereby June 2010, to be   Innovation Month in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts   And urge all the citizens of the Commonwealth to take cognizance of this event and participate fittingly in its observance.  

Given at the Executive Chamber in Boston, this first day of June, in the year two thousand and ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America, the two hundred and thirty-third.

                                           By His Excellency                                                                                          DevaL L.patrick

                      Governor of the Commonwealth          

William Francis Galvin               

Secretary of the Commonwealth  

    

                     

God Save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

 

Massachusetts a magnet for federal funding

Posted by:

Secretary Gregory Bialecki, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development

The Patrick-Murray Administration partnered with The Boston Foundation on Thursday, May 29th to kick off the Foundation's FY2011 John LaWare Leadership Forum series, which will focus on job growth and long term economic prosperity.

This first in the series, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, explored the most collaborative and innovative opportunities for Massachusetts to compete for and leverage federal funds. Speakers included Doug Borchard of New Profit, Undersecretary of Housing and Community Develoment Tina Brooks, and Sarah Slaughter of MIT.

You can read more about the forum from Rob Gavin of the Boston Globe here.

A Further Outline of the Patrick Administration’s Innovation Agenda

Posted by:
Secretary Gregory Bialecki, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development

A few months ago I described the basic principles of the Patrick Administration’s “innovation agenda”.  We have done a lot of work since then, and I thought it would be helpful to describe in greater detail the various initiatives that we are pursuing, in collaboration with industry and academia.

We are:

1.  Highlighting the Central Role of Innovation in Our Economy.  The first and most important part of our agenda is simply to make the case, all across the state, that an innovation agenda must be at the core of our state’s economic development strategy.  It may seem obvious to some that innovation has been and will continue to be our key competitive advantage in a very competitive world (or, as the Governor likes to say, “innovation is our edge”). But I can assure you that many Massachusetts residents do not immediately see the connection between innovation and their own economic prospects. We are working very hard to make those connections more visible to people all around the state, by demonstrating that our successes in many industry sectors beyond the “tech” sectors (including manufacturing, financial services and health care, for example) are based on continuing innovation and by demonstrating the number of people employed by businesses that serve as vendors and suppliers to innovation companies.

2.  Promoting Cluster-Based Collaboration.  We are encouraging industry and academia to form cluster-based collaboratives that can inform us about the shared priorities of the cluster and work with us to address those priorities. Great progress has already been made (by us and by others) in establishing active and engaged collaboratives in “core” innovation sectors like life sciences, clean energy, digital technology and design, as well in emerging “edge” innovation sectors like digital marketing, robotics and electronic medical records.  (We are a rich environment for these “edge” innovation sectors because of the diversity of innovation thinking here.)  These growing cluster-based collaboratives will naturally extend across state lines, as the clusters themselves do, and there are signs that this is already happening.

3.  Improving Public Education.  We already have a strong foundation here, with one of the best public education systems in the country, if not the world.  But we are focused on the further reforms still needed to reduce persistent achievement gaps and we are organizing and enhancing STEM education efforts through a newly-formed STEM Education Coordinating Council.

4.  Attracting and Retaining Young Talent.  We have begun, in collaboration with many others, a serious statewide effort to recruit and retain young talent here in Massachusetts. One of the core audiences of our new “Massachusetts: It’s All Here” marketing campaign is our local student population. Other recent initiatives include “Stay in MA” (organized by Flybridge Capital), “innovation open houses” (organized by Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe) and “young people’s forums” (organized by Governor Patrick).

5.  Expanding Mentoring for Young Entrepreneurs.  We were the founding sponsors, with Desh Deshpande, the Kaufman Foundation and Microsoft, of MassChallenge, a new statewide business plan competition (starting in 2010) that will (among other good things) create a new statewide network of volunteer mentors for competition entrants. Other recent initiatives by others include TechStars Boston and “Open Office Hours”.

6.  Addressing Funding Gaps for Start-Ups.  Through the newly created Life Sciences Center and Clean Energy Center, we are providing public funding for start-ups and growing companies of promise that are facing funding gaps in the private equity markets.

7.  Supporting Basic Research.  Our reputation for innovation excellence begins with the great research being done here.  We cannot take that for granted.  We are working with MIT, UMass and BU, and with industry partners EMC and Cisco, to develop a green high performance computing center in Holyoke that will allow these great research universities to remain on the cutting edge of scientific discovery.  Through the Life Sciences Center, we are making research grants to junior researchers so that our best young talent will stay here at home.

8.  Investing in Infrastructure.  We are using state and federal funding to extend broadband connectivity all across the state.  We are improving roads and rail lines to support growing innovation clusters all around the state, including the life sciences cluster in Worcester and the tech cluster in Littleton and Westford.  We are working with a number of local communities to encourage new housing options that are attractive and affordable to young people and young families.

9.  Telling Our Story.  The Governor and I are using every chance we get to brag about the breadth and depth of our innovation economy. But more importantly, we are enlisting everyone’s help in telling the story also. We have moved the state’s business marketing function out of a state agency and into a public-private collaborative called “Massachusetts: It’s All Here”.  We partner closely with MassEcon’s “ambassadors” program and Boston World Partnership’s “ connectors program, through which these organizations are recruiting and organizing dozens of local business people who are excited to spread the word about the opportunities here.

10.  Welcoming the World.  We know that Massachusetts will only continue to be a global innovation hub if continues to be well-connected to the other great centers of innovation around the world.  We strive to be welcoming to anyone from anywhere who wants to work, study, visit or locate a business here. For example, in looking at a possible expansion of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, we are focusing our attention on the opportunities for hosting international conventions and conferences in the areas where we have strong local innovation clusters.

We are going to accomplish even more in 2010, which is shaping up as an exciting year for the state’s innovation economy.

What have we missed? What else is going on, or should be?

Making Our Own Opportunities

Posted by:
Secretary Gregory Bialecki, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development

I took a moment last week to describe the Patrick Administration’s economic development strategy, which has an innovation agenda at its core.

While there is no easy solution to the challenges that face us, we have been making steady progress, as the early signs confirm, on a three-part plan for sustainable job growth.

First, we are building upon our position as one of the world’s great centers for innovation....

Read the rest here at Mass High Tech.

Massachusetts: It's All Here

Posted by:
Secretary Gregory Bialecki, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development

Here in the Patrick Administration, we believe that if state government aims to be taken seriously as a partner and collaborator in our innovation economy, we must demonstrate that we can be innovators ourselves.  Today we are announcing a new public-private partnership to better brand and market the Commonwealth as a business location. Check out our new website at www.massitsallhere.com. (By the way, the website was built by a great Massachusetts company, 451 Marketing, and is being hosted by another great Massachusetts company, Akamai.)

Why is this new marketing initiative innovative (I mean, beyond the fact that it uses the internet)? Three reasons:
 
1. We are moving the marketing of the Commonwealth as a business location out of state government and into a public-private partnership. As you will see from the website, we have enlisted the help of an extraordinary group of businesses, academic institutions and others into this effort.  This simply has not been done before in Massachusetts.
 
2. Most state marketing efforts are primarily focused on persuading great companies from other states to locate there. We look at it differently. Our primary focus will be right here: convincing local students to start their careers here, convincing local entrepreneurs to start companies here and convincing local small companies that this is the right place to grow their businesses to scale. If we get that right, we will have a very prosperous future here (and, by the way, others will come here to get in on the action).
 
3. We are going to talk unabashedly about the world-class businesses, people and ideas that are here.  We agree with Scott Kirsner that it's time to start bragging about what we do.
 
There is room in this new effort for everyone who wants to help us tell the Massachusetts story. We hope you will join us.

Governor Declares 09.09.09 Video Game Innovation Day in Massachusetts

The following is the full text of a proclamation by Governor Deval L. Patrick

Whereas Massachusetts, a world leader in technological innovation, is home to one of the largest and most diverse clusters of video game companies and talent in the country, generating over $3 billion in sales in 2008; and

 

Whereas In 1961, MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell and Wayne Wiitanen invented the game Spacewar!, one of the first video games ever created; and

 

Whereas Throughout the Bay State, innovative companies are developing new gaming technologies from diagnostics to social media.  Our universities feature programs and curriculum that support the growth of the videogame industry; and 

Whereas On this day, Harmonix Music Systems, the Cambridge-based inventors of Rock Band and developer of the original Guitar Hero games, is releasing The Beatles: Rock Band™, a game that will not only bring the creativity and joy of The Beatles music to countless people, but will introduce the Fab Four to new generations of fans, 

Now, Therefore, I, Deval L. Patrick, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, do hereby proclaim September 9th, 2009 to be,

 Video Game Innovation Day

 And urge all the citizens of the Commonwealth to take cognizance of this event and participate fittingly in its observance.

 

Given at the Executive Chamber in Boston, this ninth day of September, in the year two thousand and nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America, the two hundred and thirty-third.

                             By His Excellency                  

                                                                                        DevaL L.patrick

                      Governor of the Commonwealth          

William Francis Galvin               

Secretary of the Commonwealth  

    

 

 

God Save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Reputation of Innovation

Posted by:
Secretary Gregory Bialecki, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development

How is it that Massachusetts has so many innovative ideas? Most people would give the credit to our great research universities. While they do deserve a lot of credit, there are also innovative ideas emerging all the time from our great independent non-profit research institutions (like the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) and from our great corporate Research & Development centers.

The Governor and I had a chance to attend the grand opening of Saint Gobain’s global R&D global headquarters in Northborough last week.

 Governor Patrick lends a hand at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Saint-Gobain R&D Center.

 

This new facility represents a $15 million expansion of an existing 26-acre site in Northborough. Of the company’s four research centers worldwide, the Northborough site is the largest. The building offers a team of 200 scientists and engineers 60,000 square feet of new laboratory and office space wherein to conduct research into building materials, plastics, ceramics and abrasives, as well as the development of state-of-the-art technology to promote energy efficiency in buildings. The company’s products have a variety of uses, from household use to commercial/industrial applications—including use by NASA and the international space station and, locally, in the construction of the new Northborough R&D center.

Designed by local architectural firm Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott, and constructed by A.J. Martini, the new building itself is an innovation.  Making unprecedented use of Saint Gobain building products, it is anticipated to receive a prestigious Gold Rating in the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED(R) "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" energy efficiency rating program—which very few buildings in New England have received. Rakesh Kapoor, director of the new center, estimated the facility is in the top 10 percent of energy efficient buildings in the United States.

To my original point, Saint Gobain is well aware of all the work performed at our universities. Alain Zanoli, VP of R&D for the company, cited Massachusetts universities' (and the well-equipped workforce they help generate) as one of the reasons Saint Gobain decided to open the center in Massachusetts. In fact, several research institutes have partnered with Saint Gobain on this project.

This announcement, which received coverage by the Telegram , MetroWest Daily News , and NECN is just one of countless examples of how Massachusetts’ reputation as a place that is conducive to fostering innovation attracts investments from like-minded institutions and corporations.

Activating our Collaborative Gene

Posted by:
Secretary Gregory Bialecki, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development

The Governor and I have had many, many conversations with leaders in our innovation economy over the last two and a half years. The overwhelming consensus has been that we have all of the building blocks necessary for a dynamic innovation economy - plenty of good ideas fostered by a very active and diverse research environment, strong entrepreneurial talent, access to venture capital, and access to a highly educated workforce.  But the overwhelming consensus is also that we are missing the collaborative “glue” that is needed to bring all these elements together and truly unlock our innovation potential.

Some have gone so far as to say that folks around here are missing the collaborative gene Can Boston lure the best? . We won’t go that far, but we readily agree that the collaborative gene has been far too dormant. So we think that one of the most important things that state government can do to promote innovation in Massachusetts and New England is to applaud and support every effort we can find that activates our collaborative gene.

For example:

•    Boston World Partnerships, a web-based networking effort created by Mayor Tom Menino to connect members of Boston's business and civic community with their counterparts from around the world. I am pleased to serve on the board of Boston World Partnerships.

•    Stay in MA  - a scholarship program funded by local venture capital firm Flybridge Capital Partners . The program allows Massachusetts college students to attend events in the local business community.

•   MassChallenge , a new state-wide business plan creation contest that will encourage, mentor and reward entrepreneurs with innovative ideas who will start their new businesses and create jobs in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth is proud to be one of the founding sponsors of this competition, along with Desh Deshpande, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and Microsoft.

What are we missing?
What do you see as the best examples of local collaboration in the innovation economy?