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Manufacturing may not be dead in New England after all. In fact, it’s alive and kicking, according to MIT Sloan School of Management professor Michael Cusumano.
“It may not be the smokestack manufacturing like we saw in the past, but it’s happening,” Cusumano said.
Cusumano spoke at MIT’s Future of Manufacturing Innovation event last month, giving an overview of his forthcoming book, “Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World,” due out in the fall. While the loss of high-paying, unionized factory jobs over the last 40 years has made headlines, Cusumano says the U.S. looks pretty good when seen through the lens of the principles outlined in his book — platform development, services, innovation, engaging the customer, flexibility and differentiating product lines. Much of that is due to the country’s leading academic institutions that turn out new technologies in clean energy, life sciences and other fields, Cusumano said.
Still, Cusumano would like to see some of that academic talent rerouted. He said he’d like to see more business school grads joining startups and “making things that have some real lasting value.”
“We waste brainpower out of the business schools on Wall Street, creating havoc with finances,” Cusumano said.
He added that it was impossible to know what the manufacturing landscape would look like in the future, but added that he expects the storage, materials, biotech and pharmaceuticals industries to remain strong examples of local manufacturing.
“I don’t think things are quite as glum as they’ve been made out to be,” he said.
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