Dr. Robert M. Krim - Boston Made: From Revolution to Robotics, Innovations that Changed the World

Imagine melted candy leading to one of the greatest modern innovations. So it was for Percy Spencer, who walked through a radar test room at the Boston-area Raytheon Company one day in 1946 and discovered that the chocolate bar in his back pocket had been turned into a sticky mess. A self-taught engineer and quick thinker, Spencer wondered if the same microwave-emitting tubes known as magnetrons, which had been used for military radar (and put Raytheon on the map during World War II), could cook up other snacks. So he brought in a bag of popping corn and put it in front of the magnetron tubes. Presto, he had popcorn. Within a year, Raytheon was selling the Radarange, later known generically as the microwave oven, and over the next forty years the company, and its Amana subsidiary, produced millions of microwave ovens.

Its a great story. But its only one of nearly five hundred innovations at the heart of Bostons history. No other American city has identified so many world-changing innovations as part of its narrative. Another large American city recently listed all of its firstspeople and innovationsand came up with eighty. Over the past four centuries, Boston and Massachusetts have continually been a center for the inspiration, creation, and development of some five hundred life-changing discoveries.

This midsized city, perched on the northeastern edge of the continent beside the Atlantic Ocean and founded by Puritan settlers, is still dotted with cobblestone streets and costumed re-enactors who passionately tell the story of how the American Revolution began in Boston. It is a place devoted to its sports teams, its prestigious universities, and its esteemed medical centers. Across the centuries, the capital of Massachusetts has nurtured entrepreneurial spirit; encouraged innovation; and rocked the world with medical breakthroughs, technological advancements, and social innovations.

The Boston region witnessed the worlds first successful organ transplant. It was the first home to the telephone, modern venture capital, and the creation of the best available medication for multiple sclerosis. The chocolate chip cookie was born here, as were basketball and the first public park in the United States. The state of Massachusetts was the first to abolish slavery and the first to declare marriage equality for gays. Such a broad gamut of innovative events is remarkable and unprecedented.

Of those many hundreds of innovations that have emerged from the Greater Boston region over the last four hundred years and changed the nation or the world, Boston Made chooses to tell the stories of fifty of them. Each story is complete in itselfbut taken together, they provide an understanding of why the Boston area has been notably innovative over time. This history is not an accident: as you will see, detailing the crucial innovations and examining the common features driving them illustrate clearly how Boston is a case study in innovative excellence that provides potential lessons for other regions seeking to become or remain vibrant and relevant in a rapidly changing world. (Boston, long the dominant city in Massachusetts and New England, is used throughout this book to describe the specific geographic entity itself as well as the region that surrounds it.)

Boston Made details how successive waves of innovation have allowed Boston to reinvent itself repeatedly, remake its economy, and retain its relevance. A deep dive into these innovation stories reveals the reasons for this excellence. Innovation always has a little magic about it, a little something that evades definition. But that magic doesnt happen in a vacuum. Every one of the innovations described in this book, to varying degrees, emerged from a perfect storm of circumstance, a context that allowed startling and unlikely successes to flow. And that context is made up of five key drivers: strong entrepreneurship, local networking, local funding, local demand, and global demand. Examining these interrelated drivers, which we will do later in this introduction, reveals the general characteristics that transcend the unique circumstances of Bostons history and illuminates the challenges and opportunities faced by other cities and regions. In other words, the Boston story holds lessons that can be applied anywhere that people seek to change their city and world for the better.