We can’t sit idle as Washington pulls the plug on the Massachusetts innovation economy
With federal cuts threatening research, clean energy, and universities, the state should act quickly to pass the DRIVE Act
Massachusetts has experienced a full assault on the basic pillars of our innovation economy. Clean energy programs and infrastructure, biomedical research funding, immigration, and core funding and academic freedom at our state’s leading universities have all landed in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s reckless cuts and ideologically extreme policy agenda.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey
While President Trump wraps this all in America First rhetoric, these moves will severely undermine our country’s ability to compete economically and remain a global leader in cutting-edge research and development. Given the outsized role these areas play here, the threat to Massachusetts is particularly acute.
The Commonwealth needs to act boldly and creatively to respond to the threats to its innovation economy. Fighting to reverse these moves in Washington should be a top priority, but we surely can’t count on that happening. We may not be able, on our own, to mitigate the full impact of these harmful policies, but we can take action at the state level to counter their effects.
Over the summer, Gov. Healey unveiled a proposal to do just that. The Discovery, Research and Innovation for a Vibrant Economy, or DRIVE, Initiative includes a call for $400 million in state appropriations to help make up for some of the lost federal funding.
Committing public dollars to help bolster or jumpstart economic activity is not something that should be done lightly without due diligence and careful consideration. But in weighing the governor’s proposal, legislative leaders don’t have to look back too far for an example of unquestionable success with such a strategy.
It may be hard to remember, but Massachusetts wasn’t always the leading state for the innovation economy. In 2003, despite our state’s deep strengths in finance, health care, and higher education, the major economic story of the day was Boston losing Fortune 500 headquarters.
The Commonwealth had invested heavily in remaking Boston’s downtown and waterfront, but 20 years ago the Seaport was best known for inexpensive parking lots. The state’s economy had crashed in 2001, and it was only slowly regaining the jobs lost during the recession. In 2004, the Boston Foundation bemoaned the fact that greater Boston “lacked the collaborative gene,” which was essential to competing in the global knowledge economy. There was significant pessimism disguised as realism – which all made sense if you were a fan of the Boston Red Sox during the many decades leading to October of that momentous year.
As seen in the sudden reversal that year of our baseball fortunes, however, the world changes – sometimes quicker than you expect. I served in the Patrick administration during both of the governor’s terms, eventually as the state’s first assistant secretary for innovation policy in the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, and witnessed this firsthand.
In 2008, Gov. Patrick and the Legislature partnered to launch the state’s 10-year, $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative, which served as a catalyst for regional partnerships and international investment.
The scale of the initiative drew international attention and investment in Massachusetts, while the vast majority of the state funds invested (over 70 percent of funds through FY 2014) were spent on research and development infrastructure and educational programs throughout the state. A 2018 impact study showed that Massachusetts outperformed peer states in life sciences wage and job growth from 2009 through 2016, providing evidence that the initiative did make a meaningful difference in improving the state’s competitiveness.
In 2009, the state provided seed funding for MassChallenge, one of the world’s largest startup accelerators and competitions. Anyone who attended a MassChallenge event can readily attest that it had a dynamic effect – as if a world-class region was meeting itself for the first time. MassChallenge reinforced the state’s international reputation for innovation while also supporting the state’s entrepreneurial ecosystem by inviting winners from regional startup accelerators to join its program.
In 2012, the state’s five largest research universities partnered to open the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center – a major research facility – in Holyoke. It was the first significant collaboration to ever take place among these universities – and there, too, a seed investment by the state was critical to its success. Through the computing center, the partner universities have sponsored collaborative research by faculty across their schools and with external partners, with the goal to make our state more competitive for major federal research funding opportunities.
Unquestionably, the Commonwealth is right to focus on a triad of long-term challenges that threaten our economic health and competitiveness: affordable housing, education and workforce development, and safe and efficient transportation. Progress in those areas creates a more livable state for all of us and unlocks bottlenecks to hiring and growth. But it won’t be enough to forestall the worst impacts of current federal policy.
The actions of the federal government strike at the very heart of our state’s competitive advantage. Massachusetts is a magnet for the world’s talent, from undergraduate students to postdocs to regional headquarters for major multinational corporations. We thrive on collaboration and the sophistication of our experienced researchers, investors, executives, advanced manufacturers, and technicians.
Collaboration is at the heart of our success. And collaboration requires trust, mutually agreed upon goals, resources, and sufficient stability over time to execute on plans. It requires belief, hope, and expectation that hard work will lead to accomplishment, whether that is in six months, a year or five years. The state investments described above succeeded in part because they were sustained commitments that improved capacity and created a reliable state partner that enabled the private sector and universities to make long-term plans and investments of their own.
That’s why it is imperative that our state’s leaders – from government, education, and industry – partner and respond robustly to this threat.
The House and Senate, with whatever modifications they deem appropriate, should move quickly to pass the DRIVE Act, which is designed to stabilize and grow our state’s research and innovation ecosystem. Roughly half of the funds would be devoted to backfilling some of the support for our universities, investing in promising research proposals that went through rigorous scientific review prior to the federal cuts.
The second half of the funds would support new collaborative research and initiatives that can accelerate our innovation economy. For new initiatives, the Commonwealth should require substantial direct and in-kind matches to magnify the impact of state dollars. In addition, the state should be ambitious in choosing initiatives that bring together multiple partners and advance national research priorities that have been defunded or opposed by the Trump administration.
We are, eventually, going to come out of this unsettling era. How we do so is up to us. In a moment in which fear and uncertainty abound, we should set the goal for Massachusetts to emerge as the strongest, most competitive innovation state in the nation in 2029.
Eric Nakajima is an economic development consultant in Amherst. He served in the Patrick administration as assistant secretary for innovation policy in the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.
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