With the global recession sending not just companies but public-sector budgets into massive decline, lots of pols want to know what to do to help the major growth engines in their regions spin back up.
My home state is no exception; the meltdown in Massachusetts tax revenues caused a gap of at least $600M in the state’s FY2010 budget, putting us in the top 5 in absolute size of gap when we’re 15th in population. A recent gathering of some of the good and the great in the state’s tech sector, attended by our governor, assessed the burgeoning reach of the digital technology sector in the state’s economy and considered prospects for stimulating its growth.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick admiring my moderating? Or my haircut?
The good news: the state’s tech hub has fared better than other sectors, and by many measures — VC investment, attractiveness to entrepreneurs, more — is the second-ranked state in the U.S. (following of course the state with the biggest budget woes by far).
The bad news: the number of things we could consider doing to help is legion. Participants debated changing state laws regarding non-compete agreements (which personally I believe is a red herring, but that’s another post), the role of the academic sector in creating awareness of the local employment opportunities for students after graduation, and more.
I led the Q&A, but the entire time I just wanted to yell out: “Build out the network!” In my opinion, the expansion of a high-capacity, intelligent network infrastructure is the single biggest contributor to economic productivity we have available to us, either at the state level or worldwide, because it:
- Brings service work to people in remote locations (where factories may have closed or other options are limited)
- Attracts businesses to the area that depend on network capacity and speed
- Helps businesses eliminate physical infrastructure expense
- Recaptures productivity from workers on the move
Happily, the first question the governor was asked touched on the state’s leverage of federal broadband stimulus funds. The Anywhere Network needs to get to the towns of western Massachusetts just as much as it needs to reach India and sub-Saharan Africa.