Columnist: more signs needed to trumpet Kendall Square identity
There has been a little buzz recently about a proposal before the Planning Board that would make it easier for companies to have signs with their names up on tall buildings. Some say it would make Cambridge look gaudy from Boston, while others feel the signs would be "tasteful and informative and add a little sparkle to the nighttime sky".
As a life-long Cambridge resident, and an active member of the Kendall Square community, I believe that our drab, undifferentiated Kendall Square is in desperate need of a stronger identity. More visible signage is a terrific place to begin telling the story of what is happening here.
Recent research by the Boston Consulting Group suggests that our own humble Kendall Square may be the most dense hub of innovation in the world—4 to 5 times more dense than the next closest place, Palo Alto, CA. But who would know that? If you visit Palo Alto, or indeed any of its neighboring towns along highway 101, you are immediately informed of all the well-known companies that are based there. We would have to forgive any foreigner visiting our community and theirs, were they to conclude that all the action is out there.
As MIT President Dr. Hockfield said recently, with all the amazing things we do inside our buildings, we somehow need to "turn our buildings inside out". While there are many ways we seek to do that, such as hosting high school interns, it would help if we also made a clearer visual statement about what is inside them.
On March 18th of this year, Boston Globe columnist Scott Kirsner, once based in Silicon Valley, gently poked fun at us for our New England modesty. When Google and VMWare finally got very small signs placed in front of their building, Kirsner trumpeted it in an article entitled "A higher profile for two tech giants in Kendall Square". In the article he wrote:
"Why did it have to be a secret that this unassuming brick office building is home to the Cambridge offices of Google, a search engine you might have heard of, and VMware, the Silicon Valley virtualization pioneer that is majority-owned by hometown storage giant EMC Corp.?"
In true Puritan style, we hide our best assets well, lest anyone know that we are special.
Yet today we are in an age of global competition. Does our attitude still make sense?
Tim Rowe is the CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center
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