I grew up in Southern Berkshire County, graduated from Monument Mountain High School, and, after college and law school in New York and seven years working for the New York State Courts, I returned to the Berkshires with my wife and kids, keen on making an impact locally. In the first economic development project I worked on, I had the fortune of meeting Dr. Gray Ellrodt, former Chair of Internal Medicine at Berkshire Health Systems, who was involved in the same project because he understood how the economic health of a region was correlated to the physical and mental health of its residents. As Dr. Ellrodt pointed out—and backed up with scientific data—a person’s zip code is a better predictor of their health than their genetic code.
A couple of years later, when I got involved with the Berkshire Innovation Center, two related research points stood out to me. First, there is a tremendous amount of data supporting the importance of a diverse local economy. The more diverse a local economic ecosystem is, the more resilient it will be, and the more it will be able to withstand shocks like crop failure, market downturn, business closures, or, like we’ve recently experienced, the impacts of a global pandemic. Second, jobs in the advanced manufacturing and engineering sector offer some of the highest wages and best paths for career growth and have a much more significant jobs multiplier effect than jobs in nearly all other sectors. For every job created in this sector, another 3.8 jobs are created in other industries that support that one job.
These three data points—the relationship between a person’s economic status and their overall health, the critical importance of a diverse local economy, and the impact of jobs in the advanced manufacturing and engineering services sector—inspire the work we do at the Berkshire Innovation Center.
For those who are not yet familiar, the Berkshire Innovation Center—aka BIC— is an independent non-profit that serves as a catalyst to spark innovation and sustainable growth of technology-focused companies. In other words, we support businesses in the sector that provide some of the highest and most impactful jobs, which happens to be a sector that is often overlooked here in the Berkshires, where our economy is blessed with such renowned cultural and outdoor attractions.
As an organization, we span Berkshire County and beyond, but our home base is in Pittsfield, where we operate a 23,000-square-foot facility with event and training spaces, multiple laboratories with advanced equipment, and offices for business incubation. We support our sector by offering learning opportunities for people in technology-focused careers and those interested in such careers, by offering shared access to technologies for training, testing, and prototyping, and by building a community of like-minded people who can share knowledge and support one another. In our experience, when “Learning,” “Technology,” and “Community” all come together, the ground becomes very fertile for “Innovation.”
The BIC serves 32 industry-member companies and another 30-plus affiliate organizations. Combined, the BIC member companies employ nearly 8,000 people in our region and, on average, are anticipating 18 percent job growth over the next 24 months. These firms are making significant capital investments in the county and will continue to drive economic growth and resiliency for years to come. With their energy, the Innovation Center in Pittsfield has become a true hive of activity for our business community. In 2022, we tracked 135 visits by member companies, 211 events/gatherings, and 3,731 individual visits, which included visits from 449 students and 365 educators.
This year promises to be as active: 2023 will see the launch of new programs, new initiatives, and new partnerships, all with an aim of supporting our sector and providing more onramps to the network we are building. As more people have greater access to careers and career paths in technology-focused industries, the firms that are reliant on this talent will grow, the jobs will multiply, our regional economy will become more diverse and more resilient, and the overall economic health of our county and our people will improve.
Thank you to The Berkshire Edge for inviting me to participate in the Business Monday section. I look forward to sharing more from the Berkshire Innovation Center—and the people and firms we work with—throughout 2023. I will explore new technologies I am seeing out in the field, the impact those technologies are having locally, the priority industries the new administration will be focusing on, and opportunities I see for existing firms, entrepreneurs and innovators, and those considering embarking on a new career path.
