Tech should begin at home

LAST WEEK , Google unveiled its new Cambridge office with a party that featured, among others, Governor Deval Patrick, who engaged in a spirited bit of Google employee culture by playing ping-pong in the funky, California-like space.

Google's decision to invest here, coincided with Microsoft's decision to open a research facility in Cambridge. Both events demonstrate that, though we tout ourselves mostly as a biotech and clean technology state these days, we still have real strength in communications technology.

But these events also underscore a more unsettling fact - that Massachusetts lacks communications tech giants of its own, save EMC and perhaps the fast-growing Akamai.

Why does this matter? Out-of-state companies come here mostly for our engineers, which is certainly not a bad thing. But companies headquartered in this area station their bosses here. And not just the bosses, but also the hundreds - sometimes thousands - who work at the top levels of research and development, finance and marketing, and project development of all kinds. And locally-headquartered companies create other economic activity. They often seed or acquire local small companies or they spawn entrepreneurs who start their own companies.

Take a simple Google-centric example. A New York Times article last year described two MIT PhD students, Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket, who a few years back helped to build Roofnet, a wireless mesh network that offered free broadband service to an area covering about one-third of Cambridge.

According to the Times, the pair showed their technology to Google executives, who were impressed enough that they joined with California-based Sequoia Capital to invest in a new company founded by the students. Today, Meraki Networks is up and running - in Mountain View, Calif.

Too many of our brightest young entrepreneurs flock to Silicon Valley, whose giant companies help to seed their growth.

Perhaps Google will do the same in Massachusetts. The firm is already investing heavily by developing its Android wireless operating system here. But depending on the kindness of strangers, so to speak, is risky business. The presence and resources of tech giants like Google, Cisco, and others help to create an entire "ecosystem" that keeps California on the communications industry's cutting edge.

In Massachusetts, we seem to be pouring most of our attention into biotech and now clean technologies. And yet our communications sector remains strong: Akamai is the leader in Interent content delivery; iBasis and Acme Packet thrive in the voice-over-Internet business; Digitas is a leader in digital marketing; and Starent and Airvana are fast-growing players in wireless infratructure.

More important, all these companies have gone public in recent years, which means they've made a conscious effort to remain headquartered in Massachusetts. So there is hope.

The challenge is twofold: How to nurture those that are here, and how to retain the best talent, so that, unlike the founders of Meraki, or more famously, Facebook, they don't take their ideas to the sunny valley to the west.

These steps would help: We need a coordinated effort to convince our best minds that this is a place to stay and start companies. We need to prime the pump at our universities - especially the public universities with whom we have direct leverage - to produce more engineers and other smart workers who can staff the companies that have decided to stay here. (One local CEO of a company that went public in 2006 recently told me he could foresee leaving Massachusetts or at least opening a substantial development operation elsewhere because he can't find enough home-grown talent.) We also know that we can invest in basic university research in the same way Governor Patrick is planning to do in biotech.

But ultimately, we need a call to arms, the same sort of broad-based private and public sector campaign that we're pursuing in biotech and clean tech. We're rightfully pursuing those two industries because they are filled with growth potential. But the explosion in wireless, video over the Web, and other applications puts communications squarely on the innovation frontlines once again.

Google's arrival in the Commonwealth sends a great signal. But we need to also create the next Google or the next Microsoft or the next Cisco. Or all three.

Mark Horan is executive director of the Massachusetts Network Communications Council.