Creating the future: that was the big theme at Boston 2035, our special full-day conference looking at how the innovation landscape in New England and beyond will evolve over the next 20 years.
The event was co-hosted by Babson College and Olin College on a picture-perfect June day. It was great to see so many of you there; we couldn’t have done it without your ideas, questions, and interactions.
Huge thanks to our supporters: Platinum sponsors CBT Architects and Elkus Manfredi Architects; Silver Sponsors Boston Children’s Hospital, Fish & Richardson, InkHouse, the Kauffman Foundation, and Xerox. And to our transportation partner, Skedaddle, and event partner, WGBH.
A few high-level takeaways from the day:
1. Look for some totally new ways of developing drugs and treating underlying causes of disease. Over the next 20 years, we will all be grateful for that. And Boston is positioned to lead the world in those areas.
2. There will continue to be wild swings in what’s fashionable in the tech startup world—think drones, virtual reality, and wearables today. Also be ready for at least a couple more entrepreneurial crashes over the next two decades.
3. What will education look like? It will be more distributed over space and time, but also more compressed into bite-sized chunks, with people learning new skills on a daily basis. Boston could be a model for that.
4. None of this matters if we don’t also solve pressing global problems of inequality, infrastructure, climate change, renewable energy, and healthcare. But there are reasons to be optimistic.
We hope you enjoy the pictures from the day. Special thanks to Keith Spiro Photography for the shots.
