Define competitive advantage for a business and if innovation is not the first word, it should be.
In a similar way, cities, regions and states enjoy advantages in today's hyper-competitive world if innovation is the hallmark of their businesses. Think Silicon Valley. Or closer to home, the Boston region, with a strong hub in Cambridge.
Gov. Gina M. Raimondo has put economic-development carrots out for projects that support innovation, and one of the potential recipients of that money is the Cambridge Innovation Center, which has indicated that it might consider setting up a satellite project in Providence.
Just what does the Cambridge Innovation Center do? At its core, it provides two things that startups in the Innovation Economy crave: highly utilitarian space, and connections to other entrepreneurs.
Sixteen years ago, the CIC opened a one-story office in Kendall Square. Today it fills six stories with 750 client-companies and their roughly 3,000 workers, and has been home to more than 2,000 companies over the years. One spinoff from that effort is LabCentral, a wet-lab version of the CIC. Founded in 2013, today it has 28 bioscience startups in the space and has a waiting list to get in.
At this point the Cambridge Innovation Center and LabCentral are self-perpetuating engines of growth, and they are exactly what Rhode Island needs to make its mark in the domestic and international markets.
The only question is, will Rhode Island do what needs to be done to build its own innovation center? •
