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Print Edition StoriesWednesday, September 23, 2009
Mass. ignorant of photonics' role in state
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How can Massachusetts policy makers promote and build a high-wage economy if they can’t name the state’s most important industry?
Since the 19th century, Massachusetts has been a world leader in a technology that today powers many of the world’s most promising products. This technology is at the core of some of the most famous brands in Massachusetts history — Polaroid, Sylvania, Raytheon, American Optical — and is essential to the state’s most successful IPOs of the recent past — IPG Photonics and iRobot.
Without deep local expertise in this science, there would be fewer medical devices and no solar power firms in the state. Engineers using this technology enable everything from drug discovery and DNA testing systems to semiconductor equipment, LED lights, cell phone cameras and many homeland security products.
The technology is call photonics and it involves the emission, collection, control and detection of light. Despite its great history and promising future, it is a sector that is generally ignored by the business press and by political leaders. This lack of attention stands in stark contrast to the efforts by other regions, states and countries that aggressively market and promote themselves as destinations for the industry.
Colorado, New York, Arizona and Florida all have aggressive outreach programs to attract the industry. They promote their unique value as a place for optics businesses to locate and help make connections. As I write this article a message arrives in my inbox informing me of the wonders of “Bordeaux Aquitaine - Europe’s Most Dynamic Region For Optics & Laser Technologies.” A promoter from Wales said about the same last week.
Massachusetts not only has no presence at the key U.S. optical industry tradeshows, it lost the chance to showcase the state when the East Coast tradeshow previously held in Boston, PhotonicsEast, was canceled. As a result, doctors and technologists from Massachusetts General Hospital travel to San Jose to chair a BioOptics conference that should be in South Boston.
Many of the businesses that our region takes the most pride in use optics on a daily basis.
To identify DNA and biological molecules, engineers use and collect light. Optics make cell phone cameras work. Optics provide soldiers, robots and airplanes, with the ability to identify targets and threats from a distance. Optical sensors can sniff out a bomb and identify a chemical cloud, read a bar code in the supermarket check-out line or locate a child inside a burning building.
Medical device firms use optics to see inside the body and to diagnose and treat the human eye. To treat skin conditions and view in situ cancers, doctors use lens, light and lasers. The design of energy-efficient LED streetlight requires optical engineers. And high speed data communications is based on fiber optics.
Unfortunately, policy makers’ attention is often focused on the sector du jour. The state’s bets on life science, biotech and green energy may or may not deliver growth to our employment base. But one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that most predictions of the “industry of the future turn out to be wrong. Even Bill Gates famously neglected to mention the Internet in his 1995 book “The Road Ahead.”
During the telecom boom of the late 1990s, that sector looked so promising the city of Malden decided to create a “Telecom City” in the hope of attracting private sector jobs. Their timing was unfortunate. Not long afterwards the telecom equipment sector collapsed. That bust was rough for many companies and employees. But in the long run, it was irrelevant for those who could transfer the knowledge of moving light through a fiber to new kinds of products.
The problem wasn’t that Malden leaders were bad at picking winners. The fact is NO ONE is good at picking winners, even people who get paid to do it for a living. Most venture capital-backed companies fail, and government can’t expect to be any better.
To lay the foundation for job growth, state government and public/private partnerships should hedge their bets widely. Policy makers should look not at specific industries but instead on the core skills that enable hundreds of applications. Individual companies and industries using optics will come and go; but knowledge of using light or making images has value across hundreds of fields.
Polaroid’s days as a major employer are long gone. But just as alumni of Digital and Wang went on to found successful firms, former Polaroid employees can now be found in leadership positions at small and growing technology companies throughout the state — many of them using expertise on optics they developed at Polaroid to solve new problems.
I can’t guess if the state’s next big employer will be a solar company, a medical imager or a robotics firm. But I’m confident that, no matter which sector rises to the top, optics and photonics will be involved. Despite the lack of official attention, our state still has the people and the universities needed. It also has a business ecosystem superior to New York or Central Florida or Bordeaux Aquitaine.
There is in Massachusetts a community ready to be activated, a Photonics Center at Boston University, an active chapter of the Optical Society of America and hundreds of businesses using optics and photonics.
Some of the local business enablers crucial in past Massachusetts success stories recognize the potential for the intersection of optical technologies and industries of tomorrow. A course called “Imaging Ventures,” taught this semester at the MIT Media Lab by Joost Bonsen and Ramesh Raskar, was born as a result of an observation that previous courses on new ventures frequently seemed to include unique imaging, display and optical companies.
It would be great if our state political leaders and opinion makers shared that insight.
John Ellis is founder of Optics For Hire in Arlington.
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