Long before Silicon Valley was a thought, there was Route 128: the birthplace of tech hubs. Leading way for all things tech, Route 128's history is g

1. The "Other" Tech
Valley: Boston’s
Route 128
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Meredith Leigh Pratt Presents

2. EAST COAST &
WEST COAST
When we think tech, we think Silicon Valley. That little piece
of California just south of San Francisco has been the
world’s most ubiquitously hyped tech hub. But long before
Silicon Valley, back when the tech hype machine was still in
its adolescence, there was another hub that in many ways
enabled the framework for today’s Silicon Valley world,
only from the other coast. The East Coast, West Coast thing
started a long time ago in tech and, just like in hip hop, east
coast seriously ruled for a long time.
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3. THE BEGINNING
OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL
REVOLUTION
In 1946, Paris-born immigrant and US Army Brigadier
General George Doriot became the father of venture capital
by founding American Research and Development
Corporation. The first private equity venture capital firm,
ARDC was intended to stimulate and support investment in
business run by returning WWII soldiers. The beginnings of
the hub were born. Yes, it was tightly coupled to the
defense industry and the space race, but there were many
other aspects that eventually enabled the consumer
technology revolution.
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4. The heavy industrial manufacturing spaces of 19th Century Massachusetts
made way for the finer manufacturing spaces of electronics all along the
Route 128 corridor. Sure, Bell Labs invented the first transistor in 1949, but
it was then Cambridge-based Raytheon who first manufactured it
successfully at scale.
ARDC is credited with the first venture capital mega-win when its $2 million
investment in 1957 became Digital Equipment Corp. In 1957, television was
as “tech” and as cool as anything in Wired today, but tech wasn’t as
glamorous and it certainly wasn’t supported by the same hype that our
collective media can enable today. But it was the beginning of the
electronic eyeball business which continues today on the world wide web,
enabled by technology that in many cases came from the efforts in the
Route 128 hub.
THINK ABOUT IT:

5. At that stage though, we were still figuring
out hardware. Tech was still about real
engineering, not simply content
presentation infrastructure. The products
of that hub had to work well, consistently,
and reliably in fault intolerant
environments. The space race and the cold
war needed different operational
tolerances than the dot com battle for
America’s eyeballs and wallets. We were
still figuring out chips, networking, and
how to make things smaller, how to keep
them from melting, and easier to move
around.
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STAGES
HARDWARE &
ENGINEERING

6. http://meredithleighpratt.com/
The pre-dot com revolution
was very much a B2B
revolution. Computing still
went from vendors to
enterprises or institutions and
operated for utility, not for
amusement. At its core, it was
about function. Form was
nice, but only as far as it
supported function. It was
about engineering excellence
and performance at scale
under duress.
FUNCTIONING
Even computer graphics
served manufacturing
industries. The Steve Jobs’
dream was really just a pitch
at the time. No one had any
doubt that these were really
not consumer products the
way a VCR was.
COMPUTING People talked about personal
computers, but only people in
the business actually had
them or used them regularly
outside work; your
grandmother didn’t need a
computer to pay her electric
bill and never went to
Facebook; she went to Bingo!
And you can use a computer
at work for distraction from
work!
THE VISION
A B2B REVOLUTION

7. The dot com revolution was a B2C revolution and it wasn’t
about function, ultimately it has been about content and its
presentation in the service of selling eyeballs or selling to
eyeballs or both at the same time. Form not function has the
upper hand in this revolution. It’s all about keeping the
consumer satisfied, clicking, and consuming effortlessly.
And it’s working great.
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A B2C REVOLUTION

8. http://meredithleighpratt.com/
The problem is that we have stopped solving B2B
problems in the same way as before. B2B
problems are being solved as B2C problems with a
B2C approach because the B2B approach has
way more complexity, takes longer to solve, and
has lower margins and is a smaller company than
say Facebook or Google. Never mind that most
companies in history have been smaller than
Facebook and Google and today’s Apple. Avid
Media is a B2B play that started a revolution, a
disruption, a paradigm shift as big as any, right in
Tewksbury, Massachusetts; the reason you are
able to so easily pay your bills online today started
with eDocs, another B2B play from Natick,
Massachusetts; let’s not even get into Analog
Devices and the serious stuff.
THEN
Enterprises are rife with all the same issues and
challenges of the pre-dot-com world, but we are
trying to confront them with blogs and content
presented in different forms, or function
presented as content, and it’s working for some
things, but not working for the really complex
stuff, but it feels impolite to bring up in large
groups.
NOW

9. http://meredithleighpratt.com/
THE FUTURE
However, B2B problems are not popular, and we still
suck at them. For example, over 80% of enterprise
software projects still fail to come in within their
original cost-time-scope targets despite 30 years of
hype and tools and process “innovation;” another
notorious B2B problem.
ITS ALL HERE FOR
THE SOLVING
Energy, environment, food, water,
pollution, plastics are all huge, tasty B2B
problems.

10. http://meredithleighpratt.com/
We need to figure out how to make money solving hard problems again.
Communicating and building consensus around complex issues is still
incredibly hard and getting harder every day with the world’s increasing
complexity.
COMPLEXITY
Energy, environment, food, water, pollution, plastics are all serious
problems that need solving, but before we solve those, we need to
figure out how to create and hold onto ever-growing consensus around
the fundamental things like “will drinking this water kill me in a few
years,” using the same technology we are currently using to be at each
other’s throats.
STRATEGY
It’s all out here for the solving, although we may need to solve issues
with our supporting economic models first. We have the most amazing
communication system in human history, but it is unable to sustain certain
types of small-scale journalism that are critical to the fabric of our civics.
TRANSPARENCY
GOALS

11. http://meredithleighpratt.com/
Maybe all of those are a bunch of smaller than
Google-Apple-Facebook B2B problems that when
solved will create a bunch of really successful
eyeball selling businesses like the last set of B2B
solutions did. And maybe they can start again right
here along Boston’s Route 128.
BRINGING IT BACK AROUND

12. THANK YOU!
Find more information on Boston, Tech., Data management,
Digitalization and more at:
PRESENTED BY MEREDITH LEIGH PRATT
http://meredithleighpratt.com/