Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick speaks with reporters in Cambridge, Mass., on Thursday, Sept. 27. (Steven Senne/AP)
It’s officially “Innovation Week,” assuming you live in Massachusetts.
Gov. Deval Patrick has proclaimed the week of Oct. 22-26 Massachusetts Innovation Week during MITX’s FutureM conference. The gathering of marketing and technology experts convenes Tuesday and ends Friday. Patrick will reportedly make the announcement tonight during the conference’s opening night kick-off event.
“We are thrilled to have the governor welcome everyone to FutureM and kick-off Innovation Week in Massachusetts,” MITX President Debi Keiman said via a release Monday.
The FutureM conference is merely one of many events being touted during the state’s week-long innovation celebration. The proclamation cites twice the number of events hosted this week as a reason for this being deemed Innovation Week:
Whereas in 2012 the first week long series of events, hosted by the innovation community highlighted Massachusetts as a center of excellence for all things related to conceiving, launching, and building new enterprises
Other events include the MassChallenge 2012 Awards Ceremony (Oct. 23), UMASS Boston’s IDEAS Boston (Oct. 24) and Technology Review’s EmTech MIT (Oct. 24-26). The proclamation goes on to refer to Massachusetts as “leading initiatives in key innovation sectors such as big data, advanced manufacturing, life sciences, venture capital and digital games.”
The state, particularly Route 128 around Boston has a storied history when it comes to tech innovation. But the region has largely been surpassed — or, as The Post’s Vivek Wadhwa has written — “left ... in the dust” by Silicon Valley. The region’s highly ranked universities, including MIT and Harvard, have contributed to a maintenance of at least some of the state’s innovation muscle.
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