Highlights from Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy blog.
Last year, I unilaterally decided to designate June as Innovation Month. The idea was to spotlight, with a calendar and a Twitter campaign, just how many events, conferences, and gatherings happen in these parts — and ideally, to put to rest the notion that New Englanders do not spend enough time networking.
This year, I wanted support from others who care about making this a place of high energy, fast growth, and endless opportunity. So I invited bloggers to write about the state of innovation in our neighborhood: what we are doing well, and what we could do better.
(The official unofficial Innovation Month calendar, if you’re curious, is at neinnovation.com.)
Here are a few excerpts from their posts, along with the URLs where you can read them in their entirety:
■Jules Pieri, founder, Daily Grommet: Make sure our entrepreneurial leadership, investors, and “influentials’’ reflect the general population. The “prominent’’ entrepreneurial community in Boston is overwhelmingly middle-aged, white, and male. But the people who will buy their products are overwhelmingly not that at all. I see a problem with this picture. A funnel to failure, really. Beyond that, I believe it’s also the first time in history when we can really learn from young people in a company setting, as opposed to training them to become contributors.
So, sadly, if you deliberately set out to restrict resources and attention to a small slice of the population, like we do — unconsciously — in New England, that would be an ideal way to crush innovation. We need to fix that yesterday. Like about 30 years of yesterdays.
■Jason Evanish, customer development manager, Oneforty: Recognize we have more than two schools in the area. What do Matt Lauzon, Jason Jacobs, Will Sulinski, and Cort Johnson have in common? They’re all young entrepreneurs you may know, but while they all went to New England universities, none of them went to Harvard or MIT. Now, I don’t want to take anything away from either of those excellent universities; they act as amazing anchors to all the innovation in Cambridge and educate incredibly gifted students. . . . However, more important, we need to recognize a serious, regional competitive advantage we have here: a higher concentration of students than other entrepreneur ecosystems.
■Bijan Sabet, general partner, Spark Capital: There is a bill pending in the state House of Representatives that would create substantial restrictions on the use of employee noncompete agreements. I am completely opposed to employee noncompete agreements (except as part of a merger-and-acquisition transaction). I am not a politician, but I believe in fairness and right now we do not have a fair situation. Essentially, employees in our state have [fewer] rights than those in other states like California. And our courts enforce these things big-time as opposed to states like New York. That’s not right. I encourage you to write your local elected official and tell them that you want to end employee non-compete agreements.
■Lee Hower, former principal, Point Judith Ventures: Start-up accelerators . . . are proliferating around the country (and the world). But here in New England, the arrival of accelerators like TechStars in Boston or Betaspring in Providence has created several new pipelines of start-ups, attracted entrepreneurs from outside this region, and provided a supportive proving ground particularly for newer entrepreneurs. There are even more in the works and I look forward to seeing them blossom.
■Rob Go, former associate, Spark Capital: There is critical mass of great companies (and recent exits) where future founders and entrepreneurial executives are being trained. Not everyone will found a company right away. For those who don’t, it’s important to have pockets of excellence where talented folks can work, learn a trade, and gain experience behind successful entrepreneurs. It’s also nice to put a little money in one’s pockets too, to create flexibility to experiment. Boston has several very important pockets of excellence and great companies that are talent magnets. Including:
E-Commerce (RueLaLa, CSN Stores, Shoebuy)
Mobile (Quattro, Skyhook, JumpTap, Enpocket, MocoSpace)
Marketing, Advertising, and Analytics (HubSpot, BzzAgent, Visible Measures, Pangea Media, Dataxu, Constant Contact, Compete)
Other Awesome Companies (TripAdvisor, ZipCar, Grasshopper, Kayak, etc.)
For the full Innovation Economy blog, updated daily, visit www.boston.com/innovation. 
