Seaport Neighborhood - Infill and Discussion

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Oakley said:
A lot of start-ups in Boston tend to relocate out west, thought hopefully that slows down in the future.
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^^^
Whigh,

Felt like you really didn't answer this question.
Oakley was on the money with his statement up above since Facebook and MSFT founders were building visions & ideas for their companies at Harvard. Why would they not stay in MA or BOSTON? They couldn't leave fast enough.

Besides Cambridge leading the growth in the Biotech Sector what is BOSTON actually doing?

Bars, Casinos, Relocating biotech companies from one city to Boston on the taxpayers dime?
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

TheRifleman said:
^^^
Whigh,

Felt like you really didn't answer this question.
Oakley was on the money with his statement up above since Facebook and MSFT founders were building visions & ideas for their companies at Harvard. Why would they not stay in MA or BOSTON? They couldn't leave fast enough.

Besides Cambridge leading the growth in the Biotech Sector what is BOSTON actually doing?

Bars, Casinos, Relocating biotech companies from one city to Boston on the taxpayers dime?
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Riff -- the natural thing is for someone to leave home to go to college -- then after college some go home, some stay around the old campus -- but most leave and go somewhere else

A lot of reasons:
a) graduate school
b) climate / outdoor sports
c) night life
d) spouse
e) money
e) culture
f) housing and family life
g) industry clustering

We benefit from the best and the brightest on the planet coming here to the great global research universities (MIT, Hu and then the rest) -- but a lot of these people don't stick around for the above reasons -- interestingly enough many of them or their equivalent peers will end-up in the Hub as senior level people decade or two later

Most founders of start-ups that end up as the as the rapidly growing west-coat-style "Gazelles" are not the same as the people who become tenured professors, or research directors at some global behemoth (e.g. Novartis).

For some still not well understood reason the Hub's top top schools seems to specialize in attracting and educating the future profs.

The founders of many of the largest companies which grew-up around here are as likely to come from NEU as MIT -- HU is a rare source of start-ups

As a consequence our start-ups tend to be technically excellent, but somewhat weaker on marketing (especially the consumer market) -- Thus only rarely do they turn into major companies before someone buys them out (EMC, Akamai, Analog Devices being some of the largest home grown companies which are still independent)
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

whighlander said:
...that's why the NYC gov is trying to attract some university with the tech status of MIT / Stanford to build in the City
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I believe a consortium of Cornell and the Israeli technological university Technion have won this competition.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

whighlander said:
Oak -- are you speaking from experience or press

If from experience yours is different from mine if from press you are deluded by the Silicon Valley PR machine

Boston invented the VC and Angel approach to Entrepreneurship hundreds of years ago -- these built the great shipping trade of the 18th / 19th and the textile, shoe industry of the 19th / 20th (pre war) and then the process was re-invented in the 1950's that built DEC and the minicomputer industry

What almost never happened here was the company that grew big based on advertising to the general public as its primary or "virtual customers" (major exception was Gillette and the "World Shaving HQ"0 -- these (consumer tech) kind of companies have grown into some mega successes that predominate on the west coast in SV and Seattle

The common ingredient of most of the West Coast-style companies is relative de-emphasis on core technology (Intel and the other original HW-oriented SV companies connected to Stanford and lesser extent U Cal Berkeley excluded) and a major focus of soft technology (GUI) and in aesthetics (Apple) and / or mass-end-user features (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft)

Case in point -- DEC which was built to sell to big companies, government agencies and public / private institutions:
1) developed the core of OS technology (VMS / Ultrix) acquired by MS (NT)
2) developed the fast low power core HW chip technology (Alpha) acquirement by Intel (Itanium and the later Pentium cores)
3) and DEC even out manufactured Intel even in semiconductors in Hudson (since acquired and used very productively by Intel)
4) what DEC and most of our companies failed at was marketing (particularly to the small customers) and figuring how to transition customers to new products (Intel's planned obsolesce aka selling Moore's Law)

Recognizing the nature of the SV / Rt-128 dichotomy -- many successful West Coast and others have come to Rt-128 for help with technology and to have access to people with strong technical backgrounds:
Intel
Microsoft
Sun -- now Oracle
Oracle itself
Google
IBM
Cisco

Now we have begun to attract the rest of the world -- many in Bio/Pharma who recognize the value proposition of the core tech and tech people located here and who can be attracted to come here -- many buy in -- ut others such as Novartis just launch themselves as mega start-ups:
Nokia,
Siemens
Philips
Novartis
Shire
AstraZeneca
Schlumberger
Mitsubishi
Dassault Systèmes
Sanofi-Aventis (Genzyme)
Merck KGaA (EMD Serono, EMD Millipore)
Takeda Oncology Company (Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.)
Saint Gobain (Norton)
Alcatel-Lucent


As for New York:
the Cornell / Albany / Hudson Valley (IBM) axis has some good technology -- particularly in the nano area
NYC has only marketing / PR and real soft tech fluff to offer -- that's why the NYC gov is trying to attract some university with the tech status of MIT / Stanford to build in the City
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Yes, Boston is a leading center for medicine and education, and is a leader when it comes to R&D (and the talent that comes with that) in general. No arguments with you on that.

My focus is on the software/electronic tech and web-based sector, and entrepreneurs in general, people who can build great companies from scratch. It's great that companies set-up offices/campuses here to tap into the R&D and talent pools that Boston does, but those don't create entrepreneurial-started-and-driven companies that would have a big impact on the Boston area.

It has gotten much, much better in the last few years. More angel investment, and venture capital, firms are here, and more and more risk-takers are emerging. What Boston needs to see is a few big hits, companies that can go long, create a lot of jobs that headquartered-based can only produce, and create wealth and a pool of talent that can go off and start their own businesses. It's also important to remember that entrepreneurs don't always have the fancy educational pedigrees.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Naive question: don't all the major local universities have centers that do nothing but focus on this precise issue (translating R&D into viable companies)? Doesn't every local municipality have a major initiative with these centers to figure that out? I'm just saying I can't believe there is much mystery regarding this topic.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Tombstoner said:
Naive question: don't all the major local universities have centers that do nothing but focus on this precise issue (translating R&D into viable companies)? Doesn't every local municipality have a major initiative with these centers to figure that out? I'm just saying I can't believe there is much mystery regarding this topic.
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Tomb -- its not a mystery at the level of the concept -- just as every NFl team knows that you need to have a coach a quarterback and a bunch of other players

Yet there seem to be some small number of teams who seem to consistently execute the plan better than the others

the same is true with universities, research and resultant innovation-based local economic development

everyone knows how -- its just that execution has been by and large limited to the following (no particular order though after the first few -- some are clearly in a different league than others - -states, cities / aka areas and principle U's involved);

MA
Boston / RT-128 -- MIT & HU
Worcester -- WPI, UMass

CA
SF / Silicon Valley -- Stanford, UC Berkeley
LA -- UCLA, USC, CalTech
San Diego -- UCSD

NC
Research Triangles -- UNC, NC, Duke

TX
Austin -- U Texas
Dallas -- SMU
Houston -- U Houston, Texas A&M

the Rest of them:

GA
Atlanta -- GA Tech

PA
Philly -- U Penn
Pittsburgh -- Carnegie-Mellon, Penn State

IL
Chicago Northwestern, Uill

WI
Madison U Wisconsin

CO
Boulder Colorado

Utah
Salt Lake City Utah

NY
Ithaca -- Cornell
Albany -- RPI

NJ
Princeton - Princeton, Rutgers

other Midwest
Purdue, Case Western Reserve, Ohio State

WA
Seattle -- Washington, Washington State

VA / MD / DC
Johns Hopkins
UMD, UVA, VIT

might have missed a couple -- but that essentially is the list of the original Rt-128 and Silicon Valley then the Research Triangle and Austin -- and then the more of less successful attempts to clone those paradigms
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Maybe my question wasn't clear. Given the sophistication of the business schools in Metro Boston, it seems odd that Boston is not on top of the charts. If we were just a basic/applied science juggernaut, that would make sense, but we have so many big brains thinking in terms of enterprise and business and centers focusing on the nexus of business and innovation I'm wondering why we haven't capitalized on that to the extent one might think.

(and there's no hyphen in Carnegie Mellon -- I gotta represent the alma mater ;)) Also, Penn State is not really in the Pittsburgh sphere of influence--Pitt is, however, and it is a very underrated school.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Posted?

cresset-development-boston_1-300x261.jpg


The $60 million proposal calls for 197 units in a five- and a six-story building with ground floor retail in Boston’s transit-oriented Innovation District. Twenty-six of the units will be provided for so-called “Innovation Housing,” which are typically composed of smaller, more affordable apartments and include a shared common area and flexible layout.
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http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2012/01/03/new-apts-coming-to-seaport.html
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

If this happens (logmein, moving in)it's great news, even better than Vetex. Rather than a move across the river from one urban location to another, this is from a suburb. I wonder what critical mass would look like?
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

First question at an interview I had today in ID:

"What do you think of those 'dorms' they're going to build next door?"

Uh, yeah. These micro-units might be a harder sell than I assumed.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Graphic from today's Globe.

globegiftastic__1325740860_5421.gif


Although a new thread has been started, much of the Globe article is relevant in this thread.

http://www.boston.com/realestate/ne...il_to_bostons_seaport_district/?p1=News_links

The Globe article omits the Fan Pier residential, on the harbor-side of Vertex, which I understood was to start construction in 2012.

Re: the residential at Fan Pier:
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/mass_roundup/2011/06/fallon-eyes-condos-for-fan-pier.html
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

stellarfun said:
Graphic from today's Globe.

globegiftastic__1325740860_5421.gif


Although a new thread has been started, much of the Globe article is relevant in this thread.

http://www.boston.com/realestate/ne...il_to_bostons_seaport_district/?p1=News_links

The Globe article omits the Fan Pier residential, on the harbor-side of Vertex, which I understood was to start construction in 2012.
Click to expand...

Thank you, my phone would not let me paste the graphic here. Much appreciated.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

^^^^
Looks like Mike Brady is back in the Architecture scene working for Mr. Phillips.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

It has got that ribbon design. Very cutting edge!
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Is Waterside Place actually happening?
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

stellarfun said:
Graphic from today's Globe.

Although a new thread has been started, much of the Globe article is relevant in this thread.

The Globe article omits the Fan Pier residential, on the harbor-side of Vertex, which I understood was to start construction in 2012.

Re: the residential at Fan Pier:
Click to expand...

Stel -- the most obvious omissions where are the proposed projects for:
Fish Pier
Commonwealth Pier (aka World Trade Center)

both of course would have heights limits -- but I'm sure 10 to 15 stories is possible
 
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