Architectural Robotics ~ Superpowered Furniture!

Our MIT Media Lab colleague Hasier Larrea shares his teams work on Architectural Robotics -- furniture with superpowers! -- at TEDxCambridge...

Mini Independence Day ~ Hung's Boston 'Works!

Innovation Village ~ Kirsner Spots Ames Biz Park

The Globe's Scott Kirsner spotlights the revitalized Somerville, MA Ames Business Park and its many creative tenants in his Innovation Economy column this Sunday...

"The obituary of the Ames Safety Envelope Company was written in February 2010. [...] Most of the equipment was sold at auction, and the factory went dark. [...] The descendants of Ames’ founder considered selling the property, but weren’t sure they could find a buyer. And they fretted over filling the 290,000-square-foot complex with tenants. “I thought it was an almost impossible task,” says Arthur Fitzgerald, grandson of the company’s founder, John W. Fitzgerald. Skip ahead four years: The final chunk of space in the Ames complex was leased this month. And what is now known as the Ames Business Park is not only fully occupied, it also has become the entrepreneurial epicenter of Somerville, home to a brewery, dozens of start-ups, [etc.] It’s a more diverse blend of people and ideas than you’d find in Kendall Square -- in part because rent is cheaper -- and it’s more densely-packed than Boston’s Innovation District. [...] Now, the question for Somerville is how to encourage similar “innovation villages” to spring up. What happened at the Ames complex was a rare confluence of empty industrial space, entities eager to fill it, and a light touch when it came to planning and marketing. [...] Ames, says [Somerville] Mayor Curtatone, “has really had an impact on our thinking as policy-makers about how to preserve such spaces, to allow for more startups and ideas to flourish in Somerville, and to grow that new economy in our city.” Magic can be hard to replicate -- but it’s worth trying."

Soofa.co ~ Solar-Powered Benches in Boston!

Sandra Richter co-founder of MIT Media Lab spinoff company Changing Environments reveals their latest solar-powered bench which charges your smartphone -- Soofa.co -- to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh! And just last week, Sandra was hanging with US President Obama (who doesn't need help keeping things charged;-)

Cluster Crafting ~ TR on Tech Hot Spot Secrets...

TR's Antonio Regalado writes In Innovation Quest, Regions Seek Critical Mass asking "What’s the secret to becoming the next technology hot spot?"

"Kendall has become what economists call a cluster, a concentration of interconnected companies that both compete and collaborate. [...] net job growth comes from startup companies, especially the kind that explode from a few employees to several thousand. In technology, those winners have a way of producing more winners. The process reaches critical mass in the web of intertwined companies, resources, advantages, ideas, talent, opportunity, and serendipity that defines a technology cluster. It’s clear that what’s essential is proximity to human talent and new ideas. [...] The big questions in this month’s MIT Technology Review Business Report are why technology clusters arise and what the ingredients are to create one."

Innovation Trail ~ Kirsner Maps Boston Greats

The Globe's Scott Kirsner suggests a great idea, an Innovation Trail as alternative to the historical Freedom Trail...

"I’m proposing a different kind of walk though Boston and Cambridge: an Innovation Trail that focuses on the past, present, and future of innovation here. We’ll always have Paul Revere’s place and Old Ironsides, but what about the incubator where Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell tinkered or the world’s only “Walk of Fame” for entrepreneurs? The Innovation Trail picks up just a few years after the Freedom Trail leaves off: The newest spot on the old trail is the Bunker Hill Monument, built in 1842. The oldest stop on this new trail is the Ether Dome at Massachusetts General Hospital, where surgical anesthesia was first demonstrated successfully in 1846."

While Scott offers more detail in his blogpost, in my opinion he overlooks a few especially key places, including...

• Arthur D Little's Research Palace, the first of Boston's innovation consultancies (Bain, BCG, Monitor came later), 
• Dick Morse's National Research, the birthplace of Minute Maid frozen OJ (named to honor the Minute Men of Boston), 
• Main Street as the original telecom alley where Bell made the first long-distance phone call to Watson who was sitting in an historic landmark building first home to Davenport's railroad car manufactory, later home of Land's instant photo firm, Polaroid, and today shared biotech space, LabCentral, 
• Technology Square, the first successful University-linked brownfield economic redevelopment park,
• the Barta building where Jay W Forrester's team built Whirlwind precursor to Sage and birthplace of DEC and MITRE, 
• Charles Stark Draper's Instrumentation Labs where inertial navigation was perfected and Moon landing made feasible,
• And several more!

Also, it's worth looking at the Cambridge Innovation Map.

LabCentral ~ Shared Bio-Bench Venture Space

Excellent to see MIT-related LabCentral open!

"LabCentral supports creation of innovative startup biotechnology companies by providing a world-class environment for entrepreneurs, and a fully functional life sciences laboratory within the Kendall Square innovation hub."

Container Pop-Ups ~ Rapid Rehersal Storefronts

I'm fascinated by containerized solutions generally, but I especially have pop-up retail storefronts on the mind right now.  Things like what we've seen Boxman Studios do. We need to try these out on currently crappy parking lots in Kendall Square -- MIT's lots of ugly underused space should get this temporary, design-rehersal treatment!

Mapnificent Boston ~ Mapping Commute Times...

Mapnificent Boston maps 5 minutes commute from Kendall/MIT...

Rent Heatmap ~ Visualizing Geo-Cost of Living

Nice rent heatmap by Tom Acitelli at Curbed Boston...

Biotech Hub ~ Globe Interactive MA-Region Map

The Sunday Globe has nice piece on The state of Biotech Hub together with online interactive map by Daigo Fujiwara of related companies and institutions...

"Massachusetts has emerged as a leading center for life sciences, supported by world class research institutions, venture capital, and entrepreneurial spirit. It's a concoction of brains, money, and risk-taking that one analyst described as "magic." The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council lists more than 900 companies in the state."

Innovation City ~ Elements of Urban Greatness

Last Thursday's HackKendall conclave at the Venture Cafe was about dialing up the greater Kendall neighborhood. Among those presenting ideas were the firms Hacin + Assiciates and Sasaki and Associates which also produced this thought-piece on building the Innovation City in Boston-metro and beyond...

NFC Cluster ~ RF ID & Payments Boston Hub...

Very interesting to see what friend and colleague Damien Balsan has been up to with his NFC Cluster initiative...

"...a cluster of Boston-area groups and individuals that support the development, adoption and commercial success of Near Field Communication (NFC). The NFC Cluster Boston hosts educational programs, workshops, competitions, and exhibits. Our goal is to stimulate Innovation through the rapid development of NFC Technology in most smartphones and other electronic devices. We welcome the participation of anyone looking to apply NFC to their industry, business, application or research."

Future Cities ~ Swissnex Boston on Living Labs...

Quick little nugget from Swissnex Day 2011 theme of Future Cities spotlighting public-private engagements focusing on lessons from Boston-metro. Note especially our Media Lab colleague Ryan Chin's description of Living Labs or urban testbeds...

District Solutions ~ City-Scale Trigen and More...

As part of our MIT Living Labs & Urban Ventures classes this past Fall 2011, we had a fascinating tour of MIT's Cogen facility, a so-called District Heating system paired with a cogeneration electricity generating gas turbine... ...which distributes the resulting heat via both steam and now hot water pipes throughout campus. By using absorption refrigerators, chilled water is also supplied. This combined cooling, heat, and power system -- more accurately trigeneration -- is remarkably thermally and economically efficient. Such cogen and trigen systems are already widespread -- for example, New York and many cities in Sweden, Russia, Finland, and other campuses besides MIT -- and together with water supply, sewage systems, infrastructural tunneling and connections, and pipe-based solid waste handling systems are fantastically interesting and relevant District Solutions for our vital cities.

Killed by Incompetence ~ Latest MIT Death...

Very sad to hear MIT alumnus Phyo Kyaw was slaughtered Tuesday 12/27/2011 by a criminally careless truck driver while riding his bicycle at Mass Ave and Vassar. While this death is quite tragic -- and ought to be a capital case against the truck driver and a bankrupting civil case against the liable owner -- it's also a direct consequence of gross incompetence and complete safety neglect on the part of urban planners, traffic engineers, lawless drivers, absent or uncaring police, AWOL lawmakers, and for those rare court cases, spineless judges. Specifically, we have in Cambridge and Massachusetts today...

• Unsafe and totally inadequate bicycle lanes;
• Hazardous & poorly designed intersections;
  
• Unenforced speeding, red light, & cross-walk rules;
• Minimalist punishment of traffic & safety violations;
• Total absence of driver safety culture;
• Rampant road-rage & driving-while-distracted;
• Missing traffic intersection video recording & tracking;
• Inadequately strict driver-fault liability rules;
• Too few indictments, scarce convictions, & liberal sentences;
  
• And more.

In a just world, those directly and indirectly responsible would all be held criminally culpable for this death -- and for the many other related and entirely avoidable safety incidents between motor vehicles and the bicyclists and pedestrians they threaten daily. Let's look at the evidence: the photos show the murder victim's bike is crushed under the wheels of the JP Noonan-owned truck which is completely on the wrong side of the road. That driver should get the electric chair and yet the latest press reports indicate he's not even being charged. Even worse, an MIT campus policeman told me yesterday -- with a completely straight face, mind you -- that the word is "the bicyclist just ran into the truck" and that's why he died. So this vicious murder by means of criminally negligent and reckless driving is actually either an unfortunate "accident" or it's really the victim's own fault. Are you F#CKing kidding me?! This is completely appalling.

MIT 2030 ~ Hockfield Spins Future Campus...

President Hockfield narrates campus flyover and MIT 2030 thoughts...

Startup Cemetery ~ Parochial Kendall Honorium

The Entrepreneur Walk of Fame in Kendall Square, Cambridge has just been unveiled -- and I'm pretty disappointed. Unfortunately, it really ought to be called the Kendall Startup Cemetery since honorees are remembered via carved memorial tombstones spread incoherently throughout the Marriott plaza.

What's worse, the selection committee picked a rather parochial and narrowly unrepresentative lineup of initial entrepreneurs: seven old white US men. Really? If nothing else this is a strategic and PR blunder of the first order. With over half of the selectees already dead maybe hence the granite tombstones instead of a 21st century modern medium? And with fully six from the electro/IT sector alone and just one from biotech/lifesci, you might reasonably ask what about energy, finance, transportation, entertainment, food, and the other dominant super-sectors which most people care about?

Plus, while both Hewlett and Packard were separately saluted as co-founders of HP, only Gates and Jobs and Edison and Swanson were listed as "Founder" of their ventures. But venturing is a team sport -- i.e. what about Allen and Wozniak and Thomson and Boyer and the other actual co-founders on the startups? These unacknowledged co-creators are mostly the people who actually first built things. So what kind of mediocre message are we conveying when only the promoter-frontman is acknowledged as seemingly the solo entrepreneur?

Beyond this, the selectees are not even our local Hub heroes since all but one are west-coasters, which makes it look like we have to borrow glory. Yes, entrepreneurs are everywhere -- but then why are none of these honorees internationals from beyond US? -- i.e. where 95% of humanity lives on Planet Earth and where over a quarter of MIT students come from? Where are the Indian, the Chinese, and the Middle Easterner or African, each representing roughly 1/5 of global population? Only three are MIT alums, so maybe that's a subtle stab for diversity. But how about alums like BOSE of speakers fame, ADLittle founder of management consulting, IMPei the architect, Kalmus of Technicolor, Dorrance of Campbell Soup, Nickerson who co-founded Gillette, Olsen of Digital Equipment, Baddour of AMGEN, or Noyce of Intel -- all higher impact entrepreneurs in their day or exemplars from different sectors. And, finally, where are any of our women entrepreneurs? None? Zero?! Please.

When I originally proposed the basic idea of a Hall of Heroes at MIT many years ago, at least I suggested a thoughtfully diverse pool. There are plenty of compelling candidates to pick from, including inventors, creators, and entrepreneurs worldwide! Until those in charge of this memorial hurry up and fix things, this attempted honorium is really ill-considered and embarrassingly old-school. We here should be able to salute a properly complete cross-section of our authentically real creatives.

The Hub ~ Epicenter of Innovation and Universe

I'm sitting in this Hoffman talk listening to people going on about how things happen in "the Valley" -- meaning Silicon Valley, SF Bay Area, California, USA. Just "The Valley". What do we call things coming out of the Boston-metro area? This used to be Route 128 and the Massachusetts Miracle, and then for a horrific nanosecond, the dot.Commonwealth, but no compelling moniker seems to have stuck. But why do we actually need to reinvent this?

We have been and simply are "The Hub" -- the epicenter of invention, venturing, innovation, and the Universe!-)

Kendall-Central ~ Cambridge's Zoning Venture...

Cambridge is running a planning study to envision the future of Central Square, Kendall Square, and the Transition Area connecting the two squares. Given the lack-leadership and short-sighted nature of MIT and other dominant landowners in the area, I most surely hope the City doesn't cave in to narrowminded interests and unwise planning. FYI...

"The next Kendall Square Advisory Committee meeting is Thursday, July 21 2011, 8-10am Cambridge Innovation Center (Havana Conference Room, 5th floor), One Broadway, Kendall Square. Bring ID."