In Massachusetts, entrepreneurs are on a mission to make a difference

INNOVATION ECONOMY

June 26, 2011|By Scott Kirsner, Globe Correspondent

I was knocking back a Harpoon IPA last week in an old textile warehouse in Boston, thinking about what Massachusetts will mean to the global economy in this century.

The beer had been brewed by a company headquartered just a few blocks away, in the Seaport District. But it had been chilled in a giant steel vat designed by another company, Promethean Power Systems. Promethean is developing technology that uses energy from the sun to operate a refrigerator, intended to help farmers in developing countries keep milk and produce fresh longer, increasing their earnings. The sun-cooled beer was being served at a grand opening party for Greentown Labs, a grungy-but-proud-of-it workspace occupied by Promethean and eight other start-up companies developing new energy-related technologies.

Over in one corner was Rob Day, a venture capitalist who invests in companies like Next Step Living, which deploys an army of technicians to make homes more energy-efficient. Standing near a wind turbine prototype was Nina Dudnik, who started the nonprofit Seeding Labs, which collects surplus and outdated lab equipment and distributes it to academic scientists in developing countries.

It’s great that Boston has lots of high-paying jobs in mutual funds, enterprise technology, and razor design. But I’m not sure we get on the map in the 21st century by being known as the third-best city for financial services, the second-best high-tech cluster, or the 19th-best place for consumer products companies. (I made up those rankings, but they are in the ballpark.) To continue attracting investment, companies, and great people to the Commonwealth, I suggest we position ourselves as the place for solving big problems that make a difference to the world, at both for-profit and nonprofit organizations.

From Kendall Square to Longwood Medical Area, Williamstown to Waltham, you will find scads of mission-driven entrepreneurs trying to reinvent education or eradicate diseases. When shipping and fishing was our trade, it made sense to be the Bay State. Maybe now, we’re really the Mission State.

You can go back to the first public school, the introduction of smallpox vaccine to America, or the abolitionist movement to find the roots of our desire to take on problems that really matter.