Hub ranks high on inner city business list
Boston placed five companies on the annual Inner City 100, a national competition that seeks to find and rank fast-growing companies in the nation's inner cities.
Only San Francisco, with six, had more, said the competition's organizer, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, or ICIC, a Boston nonprofit organization that together with Inc. magazine has published the Inner City list for the last decade; the initiative was founded by Michael E. Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School.
One reason that Boston and San Francisco ranked so high is that their political and civic leaders recognize that inner city businesses play a critical role in the social and economic lives of their city, the initiative said.
Topping this year's list is CMR Construction and Roofing of Indianapolis.
In second place is Roxbury Technology Corp., a Boston company that re-manufactures laser-printer cartridges.
The company was founded by the late Archie R. Williams (right) and is now led by his daughter Elizabeth Williams.
With $11.4 million in 2006 revenues and 39 employees that year, Roxbury Technology was honored as the top minority-owned and woman-owned business on the 2008 Inner City 100 list, ICIC said.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)
