Complacency called a threat to region's future

A study released yesterday by the Boston Foundation said that Boston is well-positioned to prosper in a global economy increasingly driven by brainpower, but it must guard against complacency in areas of strength, such as healthcare, if it is to maintain its preeminence.

Such complacency contributed to the Boston area's downward spiral that began in the early 20th century, when its basic industries succumbed to competition from other regions, and more recently when the minicomputer industry collapsed in the late 1980s. If the region's healthcare industry wants to avoid the same fate, the study said, it has to do what these industries couldn't: adapt to change.

The study said hospitals are seeing their patient base and revenues erode as technology allows doctors to perform in offices procedures that once required hospitalization. And hospitals may soon find that they need to find innovative ways to deliver care rather than just close wings, the study said.

"We now see it wasn't a matter of shrinking a mainframe to create a smaller computer," Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen told the study's authors. "You had to invent the PC. So why would you think making [a major hospital] simpler and cheaper is the answer?"

Reinventing healthcare is just one of the challenges the Boston area faces if it is to maintain its position in the knowledge economy, according to the study, titled "Boston Unbound."

But to realize this potential, said the study, based on the research of independent journalists who interviewed more than 300 Boston-area opinion leaders, it must avoid an attitude that the "Boston region is so far ahead that it has no need to check on lean and hungry competitors -- from Charlotte to Seattle, Atlanta to Austin, Bangalore, India, to Canberra, Australia."

And that, in turn, will require greater collaboration among political, business, and community leaders and a determination to reach across the geographic, industry, and cultural boundaries, the study said. The region then must take on the long list of challenges that have already been well-documented, including rising housing costs, worker training, inadequate funding of public higher education, and suburban sprawl if it is to continue to prosper.

"You just have to solve it," said Neal Peirce one of the study's authors.

The study was released yesterday to an audience of some 250 business executives and civic leaders at the 50th anniversary of the Boston College Citizen Seminars. Fifty years ago, the seminar's inaugural speaker, former mayor John B. Hynes, issued a call to arms that began the transformation of Boston from a dying industrial city to a vibrant center of the knowledge economy.

While the region's circumstances are not as dire today, many who attended yesterday's seminar viewed the study as a needed call to arms if the region is to meet the challenges of globalization, rapidly changing technology and intensifying competition. House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, a Mattapan Democrat, was so impressed that he ordered 200 copies of the report to distribute to legislators.

"This is a heads-up," Finneran said in an interview. "This is about the future of the whole state, from Boston to the Berkshires, and my greatest concern is complacency."

Robert Gavin can be reached at rgavin@globe.com.