Internet Policy and the Next Presidential Administration

Google's Rich Miner pointed me to this event coming up on Thursday evening at the Berkman Center. The title is "The Uncertain Internet: Core Net Values for the [TBD] Administration."

Here's the descrip:

Now is a critical moment for defining and reinforcing the best features of our communications platforms. What do we value about the internet and what should be the focus of the next administration? This event will be a discussion exploring the Net’s benefits and its increasing vulnerabilities. How do we maintain the network we know, and anticipate the network it is becoming? What issues emerge in the era of "cloud computing" and the mobile internet? How do we ensure broadband for everyone? What can be done to promote open networks and open devices? Join us for a wide-ranging discussion with leaders from the legal, technical, and political fields.

The panel will include:

- Jonathan Zittrain (Professor, Harvard Law School)
- Susan Crawford (Professor, University of Michigan Law School)
- Rich Miner (Mobile Platforms, Google; co-Founder of Android)
- Alec Ross (Tech Policy Advisor to Barack Obama)

(Wonder why no McCain representation?)

It's free and open to the public.

Time to Get Serious About Reinvigorating the Mass. Tech Economy?

Mass Insight releases a report today, produced by McKinsey & Co., on how Massachusetts can remain a leader in the IT, communications, and defense industries.

(I wrote a short sidebar in the report, focusing on what we can do to build a bridge between college students and the innovation economy here.)

From the executive summary:

Despite the success of the technology sector, there are troubling trends that need to be addressed for Massachusetts to maintain and enhance its leadership position in high-tech and defense. First is growth, which fell to 4.3 percent annually between 2001 and 2006, only one-third the rate of the previous 5 years. Moreover, virtually all the growth over the last 10 years was productivity-driven: since 2001, information technology, communications and defense companies in Massachusetts shed a net 64,000 jobs, about a 3.5 percent drop in sector employment and nearly double the rate of job loss across the overall U.S. ITCD sector. The largest losses have been among high-value-added workers, including engineers and managers, suggesting an erosion of the Commonwealth’s tech leadership.

Indeed, more alarming than slowed growth is the state’s declining influence in the global high-tech sector. The time when Route 128 held an equivalent position to Silicon Valley in public perception is fading from memory. Through mergers, acquisitions and attrition, the roster of Fortune 1000 tech companies headquartered in Massachusetts has fallen from nine to six since 2002. In the same period, California saw a net gain of three, bringing its total to forty-two. Massachusetts has also fallen behind in the creation of new tech companies, with the relative number of company births declining from 11.4 percent of all ITCD establishments in 2002 to 9.9 percent in 2004. While California, New York and Washington have seen increases in high-tech venture investments since 2002, VC investment in Massachusetts has continued its drop from the dot-com bubble, particularly in early-stage companies.

The report has some suggestions for new strategies... some of which you may agree with (or not). Very much worth a read if you're interested in our state's continued competitiveness.

Patrick's Biotech Bill: The Decade of Truth

Todd Wallack has a great piece in this morning's Globe about the new $1 billion biotech stimulus initiative, which becomes law today.

Wallack writes:

The bill includes $250 million in tax incentives for companies, $250 million in grants, and $500 million for infrastructure, much of which is earmarked for the state university system. Several local biotech companies, including Shire PLC, Genzyme Corp., Wyeth, and Organogenesis Inc., stand to directly benefit from the legislation.

[Gov. Deval] Patrick said the legislation gives him a powerful platform to sell Massachusetts to biotech leaders - encouraging more companies to expand or set up shop here.

"We've got an awful lot to offer," Patrick said in an interview. "We are all about selling it."

Today, biotech is a pretty small (but influential) industry in Massachusetts -- about one percent of the state's workforce. Whether this billion bucks can be invested intelligently is the question that everyone in the industry was asking this past weekend at Convergence. Not everyone's optimistic. And we're not likely to know whether this money has really moved the needle for a decade.

Some Notes on Boston's Future

I met with some folks this week at Boston's City Hall to riff on some of the themes I've been writing about (most notably, what Boston can do to keep young people here... starting companies and going to work for our most innovative businesses), and also hear what the Boston Redevelopment Authority is up to.

A few notes from that conversation...

1. Boston could do a better job at being a lighthouse... sending the message that this is where you come to learn and to start businesses in life sciences...cleantech...robotics...Web 2.0 services...or anything else that's innovative. We need to communicate what's here more clearly with the rest of the world.

2. We need to help students who come here to learn to get connected with the business community: successful entrepreneurs and investors who're open to backing young people. (Or do we want the Sergey Brins, Mark Zuckerbergs, and Bill Gateses of the present to start their companies elsewhere?) One idea would be two separate annual events that would be open and free for any undergrad or grad students: say, one in the fall where they could meet, hear from, and schmooze with entrepreneurs...and another in the spring where they could do the same with VCs. (I had a conversation on that topic later in the week with Don McLagan of Compete.com, who is exploring for the trade group MITX ways to build better bridges between students and tech companies.)

3. One resource that'd be helpful to young entrepreneurs (and everyone - let's be honest) would be a wiki that served as a sort of "Entrepreneurs Guide to Boston," offering info about VC firms, networking events, shared office spaces, etc.

4. The BRA folks mentioned that they have a gigantic old building in Charlestown that's in search of a new purpose: the Ropewalk. What if, we brainstormed, five or six universities got together to turn it into a collaborative space for start-up companies founded by students or profs? Wouldn't it be cool to collect start-ups from Babson, Bentley, BU, BC, etc. in one place, and see what happened?

Here's a video that shows what the Ropewalk was like in its heyday:

Spark Capital's Campaign to Rid Mass. of Non-Competes

I've been on a long West Coast trip (Las Vegas first, then San Francisco), so I'd missed Carolyn Johnson's excellent piece in the Globe on Friday, about Spark Capital's campaign to get rid of non-compete agreements in the Bay State.

Johnson writes:

Noncompete agreements typically bar employees from going to work for a rival firm for a set period of time. Under Massachusetts law, they are enforceable except for specific professions, such as doctors and broadcasters. Under California law, however, such agreements are generally not valid, meaning an ambitious entrepreneur can take a chance with a new venture that may challenge the former employer without a legal cloud hanging over the move.

While a slew of factors contribute to the very different tech scenes on the East and West coasts, management and policy specialists have examined how noncompete agreements may contribute to very different culture.

A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research published in 2005 found that employees working in the computer industry in Silicon Valley tended to job-hop more than their counterparts in other cities with technology clusters. The paper found evidence to support the idea that California's legal climate, in which noncompete agreements are not enforceable, may contribute to the unique tech cluster in Silicon Valley.

A Harvard Business School working paper published this year also found that a 1985 legislative shift in Michigan, which made noncompete agreements enforceable, meant that inventors switched jobs less frequently.

Spark sent a letter to Gov. Patrick last Thursday. Here's an excerpt from it:

As a venture capital firm based in Boston, we are in the business of fostering innovation and building valuable companies that employ highly skilled workers, pay significant taxes, and allow the Commonwealth to thrive in the increasingly competitive national and global economic environment. We have a unique vantage point into the factors enabling entrepreneurialism in Massachusetts.

From this view point we have seen that employment non-competes are increasingly stifling the emergence of start-up companies in our State, forcing some of Massachusetts’ most innovative entrepreneurs to take on tremendous risks, and hampering Massachusetts’ ability to meet its fullest economic potential as a Commonwealth.

We respectfully request that Massachusetts legislate the elimination of the general enforceability of these non-competes in order to restore balance to Massachusetts’ labor markets and to enable Massachusetts to compete better in the national and global marketplace.

Due to the enforceability of employment non-competes in the Commonwealth, entrepreneurs must be willing to take on tremendous legal and financial risks as employers building new ventures. As a point of comparison, the State of California has largely done away with non-competes and has reaped the benefits. Just look at the vibrancy and success of Silicon Valley, which is home to more new company formations than any other location in the country. Why shouldn’t Massachusetts’ entrepreneurs have the same rights and opportunity as their counterparts in Silicon Valley?

At the end of the two-page lettter, Spark's partners commit to work toward eliminating non-competes within their portfolio of companies.