MIT’s Robert Solow won the 1987 Nobel Prize in economics for showing that long-term growth in advanced economies like the United States is not driven so much by capital investment, the pillar of classic economics, as by technological progress. Nearly three years ago, on June 27, 2007, Xconomy began publishing online from Kendall Square, Cambridge, right next to Solow’s institution. Our goal was to become the world’s most credible and authoritative voice chronicling the story of this high-tech innovation—by building a network of websites to provide up close and personal coverage of key technology clusters and then bringing leaders in the innovation community together through our events. Today, it is my great pleasure to announce that Xconomy is launching in the most technologically rich and innovative region in the world—the San Francisco Bay Area.
Welcome to Xconomy San Francisco! With this debut, our network has expanded to five cities, including our charter city of Boston as well as Seattle, San Diego, and Detroit. (You can click on any node on the map in the upper right hand corner of each page to see the news from that city, or you can read the aggregated content from across the network on our National site, Xconomy.com.)
I think you’ll find that while there are plenty of technology news sites out there, none are like Xconomy. We specialize in in-depth stories of innovation and technology strategy, mixed with breaking news. We profile the entrepreneurs and startups, venture capitalists, and angel investors continually hammering away at new technologies, as well as the innovators inside large corporations—and how their efforts fit into their companies’ overall technology strategies.
And, unlike many others, we don’t stop at information technology. We believe strongly in covering the gamut of high-tech innovation—from IT to life sciences to medical devices to clean energy and everything else in between. That’s partly because these are important sectors of our economy. But it’s also because much growth in the economy will spring from the intersections of fields like biology, energy, and information technology: witness biofuels or synthetic biology or health IT. Despite its plethora of blogs and business publications, we think the Bay Area can use our brand of insightful, broad-based but in-depth coverage. That’s why we’re here. Great stories, great insights, real news in real time. That’s Xconomy.
Xconomy San Francisco will be led by two of the country’s best technology and life sciences journalists. Chief correspondent Wade Roush, who has been in Boston since our inception, is moving back to the Bay Area, where he spent almost a decade working for NASA, an e-book startup, and Technology Review magazine. Wade, who holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT, will retain his title of chief correspondent, while also serving as Editor of Xconomy San Francisco.
Working closely with Wade, and leading our life sciences coverage of the region, will be National Biotechnology Editor Luke Timmerman. He also knows the Bay Area well, having lived in San Francisco while serving as the U.S. biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke, a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, has won several national awards for his life sciences reporting. He is now based in Seattle, where he also serves as Editor of Xconomy Seattle. But he will be spending a lot of time in the Bay Area.
Wade and Luke will be supported by the rest of the Xconomy staff, all of whom will be contributing to Xconomy San Francisco, along with our network of great freelancers. (You can read more about our team, as well as our principles and ethics, on our About page.)
In addition to great news coverage by professional journalists, Xconomy likes to highlight a multitude of outside voices and opinions from across the innovation community—whether that means Nobel Laureates, famous venture capitalists, or unknown entrepreneurs. You will find their thoughts
