Idea of the Day: 4 Steps to reinvigorate Boston’s Economy:

If I were ‘in charge’ of reinvigorating Boston’s economy, here’s how I would start:

1. Map out two sectors: traditional and emerging industries. This would basically leave us with a horizontal industry profile:

2. Add the emerging Global Mega-trends that will shape our future. These will include some fairly obvious themes like carbon capture, an aging population and the changing regulatory market, as well as others which might be even more consequential but usually capture less of our attention in the West since we take them for granted. The latter group could include water resource management, urbanization, etc.

3. Extend the horizontal industry profile vertically.

Every business starts somewhere. Boston has a rich mentorship ecosystem and great access to venture capital, but we haven’t connected the dots as well as we could. Industries like social media can begin as ultra light startups in someone’s dorm room (heard of Facebook, by any chance?). For more on these important “small step” mentorship resources visit my earlier post here.

4. Using this profile as a map, identify the areas where we are not positioned to compete effectively as a regional/national/global player, then recruit and/or home-grow businesses to fill in the gaps. The map below is just an example of what this could look like.

Not shown in this overview is the generational gap that exists across traditional and emerging industries. Alexa Scordato will be addressing this topic in her presentation about Reverse Mentorship at TEDx Boston next week. It’s a biggie.