Massachusetts is doing well in the Innovation segment of the economy across various industries. Biotech is a particular strength and focused substantially near Boston / Cambridge due to university ties and extensive success of companies. A recent report completed by the MIT Industrial Performance Center highlights a couple of areas for improvement related to scale up that should be focused on as follows: “The principal motivation for the study was the recognition that company scale-up is an important contributor to the overall performance of any economy, and that in recent years this aspect has received significantly less attention from policy makers, researchers, and commentators than has the process of new business formation’. Further: “In recent years a concern has emerged that Massachusetts could be lagging behind other technology-intensive states when it comes to capturing the ‘downstream’ economic benefits of its innovations. Specifically…that Massachusetts based companies are not scaling to their full potential or are disproportionately scaling up out of state’.
State government should diversify their support away from just pockets – Boston / Cambridge, biotech, and new business formation. Support should follow a company’s economic life cycle and not be isolated on formation and late stage companies. Scale up is where the job creation is focused and so should state Econ. Dev. programs. This is the focal point for CI Works.
