Can Worcester power its startup magnet?

A quick look at Worcester's economic base reveals that many of its largest employers were at the forefront of the global economy about 100 years ago. Is there more that Worcester could be doing to get its economy more plugged into the 21st century's economic trends?

Before getting into this, I was struck by a comment that Worcester native and Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie made last month. As I wrote in my Oct. 2 column, “Can Worcester draw entrepreneurs?”, Yoffie mentioned that his great uncle founded Worcester Knitting Co., a maker of polo shirts. Yoffie's father took over the firm.

In the 1970s, the EPA required WKC to invest in equipment to cut its flow of pollution to the Blackstone River. Yoffie's father would invest only if one of his three sons would run WKC. Yoffie's oldest brother took the bait but in the 1990s, WKC's high labor costs drove it out of business. Meanwhile, David continued with his education, earned graduate degrees from Stanford and ended up as a professor while his middle brother became a nationally famous rabbi.

For David, Worcester could not overcome the pull of other places to work. And that got me thinking about the concept of a regional startup magnet — the combination of forces that draws entrepreneurs to come to an area and build a business there. As my co-author, Srini Rangan, and I pointed out in our 2010 book, “Capital Rising,” a region's startup magnet consists of four factors with the potential to draw in capital for entrepreneurial activity.

We dubbed these four factors — corporate governance, capital markets, human capital and intellectual property protection — the entrepreneurial ecosystem, or EE. To get a clue of why Worcester's EE could be stronger, let's look at its employers.

Many of its biggest employers appear to have been founded well before the dawn of high-tech venture capitalism. Unfortunately, I don't have the best possible information on which to draw conclusions. Unlike Boston, which publishes annual lists of top employers, the best I could find for Worcester was an imprecise state report from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development titled “Largest 100 Employers in Worcester, MA-CT Metropolitan NECTA.” I would gladly report on more precise and up-to-date information for Worcester. In my analysis, below, I am excluding Westboro-based companies because, based on my interviews with entrepreneurs, most venture firms consider Westboro to be part of the Interstate 495 belt.

My conclusion is that Worcester's economy is dominated by insurance companies and the former Norton Co. For example, among the employers with between 1,000 and 4,999 employees are Commerce Insurance (founded in 1972), Hanover Insurance (founded 1852) and abrasives-maker Norton Co.

But not all of Worcester's biggest employers harken back to previous centuries. There are others that I had never heard of before — with the exception of Wachusett Mountain Ski Area, where I have enjoyed skiing many times since my childhood. For example, among the companies with 1,000 to 4,999 employees is Affiliated Podiatrists — it specializes in “Nail Fungus & Laser Toenail Treatment,” and although that number may represent its national “footprint” (pun intended), I sincerely doubt that it really employs that many people in Worcester. VNA Care Network, which offers “home health care, hospice, and wellness services,” I'd be more willing to believe is in the 1,000 to 4,999 employees.

Among the smaller organizations — employing between 250 and 1,000 people — is a smattering of state and city government entities, Wyman Gordon (founded 1883), Morgan Construction (founded in 1888 and now part of Siemens), and some health care providers. But there are also a few glimmers of high-tech hope — Abbott Bioresearch Center, which does immunology research, and Allegro Micro Systems, a semiconductor division now part of Japan's Sanken Electric Co., each employs between 500 and 999, according to that state report.

But what's striking about these examples is that most of these companies are owned by people outside Worcester. The city is not spurring enough startup growth to replace those companies that are run by people outside the area.

To spur entrepreneurship and attract capital, Worcester needs to boost weaknesses in its EE. While Worcester could “rent” America's strong corporate governance rules, intellectual property protection and its access to global financial markets, it needs to improve in the areas of building up its human capital — namely people who can start companies and help design and make the products. From that human capital, venture capital might flow to the region as well.

Getecha: Full program at Lake Constance

Aschaffenburg (R) - To demonstrate the effect of the energy is safe, middle class Getecha two-hopper mills RS series from 2404 with 7.5 kW motors. These generators are designed for continuous operation for crushing mills are made of injection-production waste or Blasformaschinen used.  

One of the two RS 2404 will be equipped with Energy-safe. According to the company statement, he optimizes the energy efficiency of AC induction motors, which operate under cyclic loading (partial load) and reduces the power consumption of the drives by up to 30%.Abrasives


Continues to show the machine builders a mill hopper RS ​​3806 Variation with rotor, which can be transformed by-pass elements of an open to a closed design, and feed mill RS 3809-S. A special feature of this machine is a self-adjusting clip control, which adjusts the feed rate of the mill permanently on the timing of an extrusion or thermoforming line. This speed automatic does not only hold the sheeting tight, but also make the set-point adjustment with the production machine and manual need adjusting, so Getecha.

In addition to the hopper and feed mills for relatively high hourly outputs at the stand even more compact granulators for smaller flow rates (up to 35 kg / h) are shown. This will include a special model of the GRS 180, the ground thanks to a special anti-wear action even abrasive material with more than 30% glass fiber. The mill has not only wear plates and wear strips in the hopper below the rotor blades, but also has rotor and stator blades with carbide inserts. In addition, licker and are hardened steel plate, and the sieve of the mill is designed to be wear-protected. The GRS 180, and also issued the granulator RS 1615 are suitable for use in industrial and laboratory applications.

The second focus is the automation Fakuma. Designed for fast, reliable removal of sprues in injection molding, for example, has issued the GLS 1-S. This side-entry device is part of a flexible modular linear motion, can be used to implement each requirement to complete positioning and handling systems with up to four axles and a load capacity of up to 150 kg economically. 

 The products are suitable extraction systems for about 2K machines. Specially designed for the gate and small parts to tap small and medium-injection molding is the GL 3-S - a lightweight with three servo axes, freelance programming and simple operation. Standard processes can be parameterized so that with minimal training. See also in Friedrichshafen will be several innovative sprue pickers, such as the GRA 112 (g capacity 500) for molding machines up to 3,000 kN, or the sleek and affordable Getpick with electrical interface Euromap 12/67 (load 250 g). Also on board is also stable for Getgrip gates with up to 1,000 g. This universal gripper has a large hub can rotate left or right and is also comfortable to use.

GRCC presents volunteer resource fair | Briefs

Approximately 50 nonprofit and community organizations will be available to provide information on volunteering opportunities. A panel of volunteer experts will be on hand to provide key points and answer audience questions on volunteering.

John Crowe recently was appointed president and CEO of Saint-Gobain Corp., a company with ties to Auburn, where it employs many people at its business unit Vetrotech. He also will serve in the same capacity at CertainTeed Corp., the largest North American subsidiary of Saint-Gobain.

Saint-Gobain is one of the the world's largest building materials company, as well as a global leader in the production of high-performance materials and glass containers.

For 30 years, Crowe has served in a wide range of leadership positions within Saint-Gobain group, including president of the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics and Saint-Gobain Crystals. He most recently served as president of Saint-Gobain's global abrasives business, with responsibility for more than 13,000 employees and 75 manufacturing facilities in 24 countries.

In Washington State, Saint-Gobain has nearly 700 employees; overall the company employs 19,000 people in 265 locations across the United States and Canada.

• Proving once again its commitment to helping Washington homeowners avoid foreclosure, the Attorney General's Office this week provided an additional $550,000 to provide free housing counseling to distressed homeowners.

"Housing counselors are lifelines for borrowers on the brink of losing their homes," McKenna said. "The work of these counselors is important because preventing foreclosures – and stabilizing home values – is key to helping kick-start our economy."

McKenna spoke from the offices of the Homeownership Resource Center in Shoreline, where thousands of calls come in every month from borrowers struggling to keep their homes.

Opening Day Reflections

It’s been a long winter. A long, cold, snowy winter. A long, cold, snowy, depressing winter. Ice, snow, more ice, more snow, cars coated with salt and dirt, fuel bills, seasonal affective disorder, slush, plowing fees; all the stuff that makes life barely worth living.

So even though spring has been a bit chilly so far, it’s still spring, and after all, this is Connecticut. I mean, despite all the whining that goes on around here, (especially among certain outdoor writers) we’re not a bunch of namby-pamby Floridians. We native New Englanders come from tough stock; we can take it, even if we don’t like it much.

Still, one sure sign that spring is truly on the march is the opening day of trout season, which is coming up Saturday the 16th. The season is already open in more enlightened states such as Rhode Island, but we Connecticut types are expected to wait until the third Saturday in April, and to our credit, most of us do.

When I was growing up in Ashaway, R.I., opening day was one of the three most important days of the year, along with Christmas and the last day of school

But since most of my associates and I were habitual truants anyway, the end of the school year was little more than a rubber-stamp event, and there were always report cards to worry about. It was usually a good day, but not great.

Christmas could also be exciting, but when one takes into account our behavior the rest of the year, there was always considerable Yuletide tension among my crew as to whether or not the dreaded coal and onions would fill our stockings. And let’s not forget the nasty old great-aunts who used the holiday to hand out socks, underwear, and other stuff we really “needed.” Christmas usually turned out OK, but all things considered, I’d assign it second place.

No doubt about it. Opening day was king.

Sometime in the late 1950s, the powers that be at the Rhode Island Division of Fish and Game decided to move the opening bell from sunrise to midnight. It’s hard to tell how or why this decision was reached, other that the fact that the people who made it were government bureaucrats and were probably under pressure to prove that they actually came to work once in a while.

But, as kids, we liked it. The midnight kickoff gave us a rare opportunity to stay up most of the night without having to sneak out of the house.

Our parents demanded that we get a few hours of sleep before heading out, but as might be expected, slumber was impossible while our consciousness was jammed with visions of sparkling brook trout and purple rainbows.

The plan was always the same: Hit the river at midnight, score a few trout, then trudge home and sleep for a few hours before heading back to the river for a day of fishing.

The plan was sound but it never worked, at least for yours truly.

Other than the nuisance chore of unhooking eels, bullheads, and other unappreciated night-prowlers, the midnight session always went well, but thanks to fatigue, the couple hours of sleep was invariably extended to lots of hours of sleep, and the full day of fishing was susequently reduced to few hours in the late afternoon.

There must have been a lot of similar observations from well-connected persons (don’t forget, this is Rhode Island I’m talking about here) because after a few years, the starting time was pushed ahead to 6 a.m.

That seemed to work a whole lot better; it was still difficult to sleep, but not impossible. And a full day of opening day fishing was finally within our grasp.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know what time the season opens nowadays. Nothing short of the false albacore run and a good morning tide is going to get me out of bed at that ungodly hour, and to tell you the truth, I’m less inclined to fish in a crowd than I once was.

I still look forward to opening day as a rite of spring, but I’m happy to let the kids have the fun. They’ll be growing up all too soon.