Jeff Bennett's Blog

As a lifelong New Englander that has been educated and built a career inside the Boston technology industry – I am a committed and vested member of this community that wants to find ways to expand and accelerate investments, innovation and company building here.

Thousands of the smartest students across the globe flock to Boston every year to attend our colleges and universities.  Our local colleges and universities also are home to some of the most notable academics in their areas of expertise.  Many of the facilities in these institutions are world class as well to advance critical research on innovative products.  We must tap into the energy, intellect and entrepreneurship of this community.  We must leverage the student body as well in all of these while these students are here.  It will spawn new and perhaps revolutionary business concepts.  It will also provide a more fertile landscape for these students to stay in the Boston area.

Scott Kirsner has been blogging about the Innovation Economy in New England for years and has leveraged his work at the Boston Globe, New York Times, Wired, Fast Company and other publications.  Scott believes as I do that we are not doing enough today to tap into the colleges and universities in an adequate manner.  Scott is building a Report Card on how our industry groups are connecting to the colleges and universities – check it out on his blog.   The industry groups is one dimension and I think Scott’s spot light can help drive awareness of the lack of collaboration and spawn new activity.  From my perspecdtive there are other dimensions to this as well and we are not doing a very good job across the board.

I for one have been involved with several projects that have tapped into the student base at Bentley, Babson, Harvard and MIT.  I have found a willing and able faculty and student body ready to get involved to learn and drive results.  In other cases I have been part of projects where a student group is in more of an observatory and analysis mode with the result being a case study.  My most involved work has come through a series of projects at Bentley where a collaboration of company, faculty and students leveraged their impressive facility.  Bentley is home to an advanced financial trading room, however, I believe the Center for Marketing Technology and Design and Usability Center are the most advanced business research labs in New England.  I have participated and witnessed the power of bringing consumers into the research process in these labs while leveraging company, academic and student resources to study and solve business problems.  It is very powerful.

I encourage all in the New England entrepreneurial community to get our academic institutions and students involved in this economy.  Lets also drive the industry groups that we participate to encourage more and more college involvement.  Lets not be shy and modest about how we are doing this as well – lets shout form the roof tops what we are doing to help guide new initatives and start to build stories about these possibilities.  There is a great opportunity in our hands.  Let’s make something happen….now!