In a recent conversation between MIT President Sally Kornbluth, Massachusetts Secretary of the Executive Office of Economic Development Yvonne Hao and others, participants talked about the ongoing movement to drive cutting-edge research at MIT, and throughout the state of Massachusetts.
Brainstorming on how innovators look for the big things to solve, the group spoke about the process of funding, and how projects get done, how a state develops into a regional economy, and how academia works with business.
As some pointed out, there’s a need to balance government needs with the needs of academia, and to assess the role that the private sector plays in both of those.
And Massachusetts, they agreed, has a lot of assets and resources in this area. Noting that Massachusetts was the first state to enact universal healthcare, among other achievements, Hao came out with thoughts on new economic development legislation that helps set out some of the top-level goals for Massachusetts state government.
These are the things she presented that the Healey-Driscoll administration can do to foster innovation within the state:
The first is to help parties to convene – to bring people together to do things in the community, to foster collaboration, and to assist, albeit perhaps in an indirect way, with joint projects and partnerships.
Then there is the allocation of resources, and the ability to pass, repeal and amend laws in ways that promote innovation.
The state, as a customer, she noted, also has purchasing power, which is another tool in the government’s arsenal in helping business to get a better position with new technology.
The last point is to ‘message and communicate’ – amplify positive achievements, and drive awareness to the state citizenry as a whole.
Yvonne Hao: Quotes from the Talk
“The world is so complicated. There are still so many big problems to solve, and that’s what we do in Massachusetts. We solve them because we have these ridiculously smart people, some of them homegrown, the best K-12 education, and then we have 500,000 of the world’s best and brightest brains coming to all of our universities, like MIT. And the question for us is, how do we support (people) after (they consider) these big problems, and start their companies?”
“We don’t choose to do things in Massachusetts because they’re easy. We choose them because they’re hard. We choose hard problems that are not solved because they’re really, really difficult, and that requires patience, it requires capital …”
Later, the group talked about the climate: how to direct research, how to work on timelines, and how to fund projects.
It was eye-opening and inspiring to think about everything exciting that’s happening in the state of Massachusetts.
As some pointed out, we have lots of startups and big industries, and when we’re all working together, we can make a lot of good things happen.
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