It is a glorious late fall morning in Boston, with the trees on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT ) and by the Charles river showing the colours that New England is famous for in October. But much as I like the splendour of the seasons, that’s not why I’m in Cambridge MA, with my colleague Norma Hogan. Later today we will be joined by around a dozen businesses from all over the Highlands and Islands.
So why are we in Boston, and why MIT? Well we have been working with one of the worlds leading tech universities for 10 years now, in fact my first visit here was in October 2004 where we focussed on IT and Creative Media technologies through the MIT Media lab. Over the years HIE has concentrated on tapping into the Universities specific expertise into venture funding, entrepreneurship, and “doing business the American way”.
However we have had some success in taking groups of companies from the H&I in a specific sector or supply chain, and exposing them to a series of research projects and technologies being developed by different students and facility (MIT is very much a research and post graduate institution – they have very few undergrads). We do this through our Membership of MIT’s Industrial Liaison programme, where over 200 of the world’s leading companies and research institutes work and interact with MIT. Our key contact there is Marie-Teresa Vander Sande, who we have worked with for many years, and is a great friend to HIE and the H&I. She will be hosting us for our visit.
The purpose of these visits is twofold. Firstly to highlight to businesses in the North of Scotland relevant early stage research and development in areas of direct interest, but which can be slightly left field or whacky. Secondly it’s to take a group of Scottish business people, technologists and project developers out of their “comfort zone” and encourage new types of networking and discussions. In the past we have had groups from the IT, Healthcare, Life Science and Creative Industries sectors undertake visits to Cambridge.
This time it is businesses in the marine sector, wave and tidal, who are “technology scouting”, before they travel on to Halifax in Nova Scotia next week, for the International Ocean Energy Conference. I’ll keep you posted on the cool, weird and wonderful things that we see here over the next few days.
From Calum Davidson , Director Energy and Low Carbon
Highland and Islands Enterprise