Where do we go from here?

Goodbye, for now, to Kendall Square, MIT, and the Newton Marriott, that power breakfast spot of the pocket-protector set. See you later, venture capitalists of the Bay Colony Center, perched above the reservoir in Waltham like money-doling deities. I'll miss the entrepreneurs obsessed with their latest project, whether they're newly degreed MBAs or gray-haired veterans of Digital and Lotus.

I'm selling out: abandoning Cambridge for San Francisco, Route 128 for Highway 101. My plan is to boomerang back eventually. But this is my last @Large column.

When I began writing it, in February 2000, the local tech economy was sizzling. Harvard students were dropping out to build websites, and my first column was about how challenging it was to find affordable office space. The life sciences scene was far from sleepy, too. But nearly six years later, high-tech and biotech are facing big problems both industries have barely begun to address.

Tech first. The slowdown that followed the dot-com era is in danger of turning into a slump. It's starting to feel like that quiet stretch between the last gasps of the minicomputer makers in the 1980s and the birthing cries of the Internet economy around 1994.

No one seems to know what's coming next. One source of optimism is the research under way at local labs -- Harvard, Boston University, BBN, and the Mitsubishi Electric Research, for example -- where scientists toil daily on far-off problems, such as tables that double as information displays, responding to a user's touch.

But Boston's venture capitalists, still singed from their overenthusiastic dot-com investing, are timid. For the most part, they're funneling money to proven entrepreneurs who have ideas for technologies they can sell to big companies.

This, despite the fact corporations have lately been as thrifty, when it comes to buying hardware and software, as a coupon-clipping grandma living off Social Security.

Google offers one example to why Boston VCs may be on the wrong track. Its two founders were Stanford grad students with no prior business experience, and had an idea that at the time seemed comically redundant: yet another search engine, supported by advertising.

Another case study is the IPO earlier this month of iRobot, a Burlington company that has made more than one appearance in this column over the years. Much like Google, its two founders were grad students -- from MIT -- who did not have a day's experience running a start-up.

But Helen Greiner and Colin Angle, along with their former prof, Rod Brooks, built the company around government research contracts. Later, they used their robotics expertise to develop a self-guided vacuum cleaner, the Roomba FloorVac. Roomba was targeted at consumers -- a market that frightens local VCs -- and iRobot chose infomercials as the core of its advertising strategy.

When iRobot went public, its shares began trading at $24 -- above their projected range -- and lately hovered near $30. Not a single Massachusetts VC stepped forward to fund the company in its 15 years.

It would be a positive development if VCs lost their fear of consumer-oriented technology, and if entrepreneurs were more willing to experiment with unorthodox models of sales and marketing -- not just sending commissioned salespeople to call on ''senior decision-makers."

Google succeeded by making the process of buying Internet advertising as automated as possible, and Salesforce.com, headquartered in San Francisco, perfected the idea of ''software as a service," allowing customers to make a limited upfront commitment and see whether they liked a new piece of software.

Among larger tech companies such as EMC Corp., Raytheon, and Analog Devices, there's been a disturbing lack of leadership -- or more precisely, mentorship. Senior executives of those companies ought to consider it part of their responsibility not just to promote doing business in the Bay State when they travel outside it, but they need to do more to share their experiences with younger entrepreneurs.

We also need our established companies to take more risks: commit to surprising new initiatives, invest in research and development projects that aren't tightly linked to the core business, and make not-so-obvious acquisitions. That'll help them avoid the fate of a whole crop of Massachusetts companies that couldn't catch the PC wave in the 1980s, such as Digital Equipment, Wang Laboratories, and Data General.

Aline Kaplan, director of communications at Q1 Labs in Waltham, a security start-up, has coined a great phrase for a danger that afflicts large companies in these parts: New England Mill Owner's Syndrome. Kaplan says there are four primary symptoms: a cautious approach, conservative spending, reluctance to take a risk, and preference for keeping a low profile.

Companies here, when they grow big and successful, tend to stick with the products that made them that way, and treat splashy marketing as distasteful.

In the worlds of biotech and medical devices, Boston is still a center of gravity. There are industry leaders here -- Genzyme, Biogen Idec, Boston Scientific, and Abiomed.

But the debates over the cost and accessibility of healthcare are just starting. Innovative drug and device companies, which now believe their job is to simply create products, will have some explaining to do.

Why is it that breakthroughs are so expensive? Are there regulatory changes -- or perhaps changes in marketing practices -- that could bring those down? What about the hidden pricing system that essentially means patients in the United States subsidize pharmaceutical innovation for the rest of the world?

Massachusetts biotech and medical device companies, and their trade groups, need to be more active in leading this conversation.

Workforce development is a more pressing issue in life sciences than in tech; here's one industry where positions go empty for months because of the dearth of qualified employees. The education industry can do more, but CEOs of local companies need to light the fire, and offer to serve as role models for students. If you're running a life sciences company and you haven't figured out how to set up tours and hands-on experiments for at least one school group every year, that's a shame.

Everybody, regardless of what industry they're in, has a stake in ensuring Boston remains an innovative place -- the future's hometown. So what are you doing to help new industries take shape, or to get your kids ready for jobs in those industries? The answer can be button-holing a state rep, helping to get a green power start-up off the ground, or simply taking your kids to the MIT Museum.

As for me, I won't be vanishing entirely. Earlier this year, I started blogging about the impact of new technologies on Hollywood, at cinematech.blogspot.com. I'm writing a book about the subject in collaboration with filmmaker George Lucas that should be out in late 2006 or early 2007. I also plan to be a regular contributor to a new column that will run in the Globe's Sunday Business section.

Boston.com has been nice enough to put a few of my favorite @Large columns up on the website today, at www.boston.com/business. I'm grateful for that. And I'm also grateful for all your time and thoughtful e-mails, all these Mondays.