Introduction
A Three Legged Stool
 
Creativity and Innovation: A Bridge to the Future Indicators Report 2002
A project of the Boston Foundation and Boston’s civic community
Principal Authors: Charlotte Kahn and Geeta Pradhan
 
Co-sponsored by
The City of Boston/Boston Redevelopment Authority
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council
Fleet Charitable Trusts
The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation
The National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership
 
The first Boston Indicators Report was released in 2000 at a moment we now recognize as a 100-year pinnacle of success. A booming economy had fueled growth in high-tech companies, financial services and real estate. Unemployment had reached historic lows, and businesses were competing for workers.
 
The first report, The Wisdom of Our Choices: Boston’s Indicators of Progress, Change and Sustainability, emphasized the risk of Boston’s becoming a tale of two cities – one rich, the other poor – the result of an expanding New Economy in which educational attainment determined winners and losers. The big debates centered on how to spend the state surplus, how to spread wealth and what to do about a shortage of affordable housing and suburban sprawl – the undertow of the city and region’s explosive success.
 
Much has changed since 2000. The end of a period of expansion was marked by a recession and the events of September 11, 2001. Boston has remained one of the most diverse, successful, and beautiful cities in the nation, still strong and resilient – but vulnerable to global uncertainties, a state fiscal crisis, and growing competition from other cities and regions around the nation and around the world.
 
This section of the web site is a summary of the Boston Indicators Report 2002, Creativity and Innovation: A Bridge to the Future. It draws conclusions from data in the full report and reflects a growing consensus that Boston’s future economic prosperity in not assured. It outlines the history of innovation in Boston and describes the “three-legged stool” of Boston’s competitive advantage: a strong infrastructure; the culture and practice of innovation; and human capital.
 
A principal conclusion of the report is that one leg of the stool – human capital in the form of the city and region’s large pool of talented young people – is already at risk, despite stellar rankings on many indices of competitive advantage. In the 1990s, Boston, the region and the state lost a significant percentage of young people between the ages of 20 and 35, a loss made more significant by the growth of this age group in Boston’s major competitor cities. This decrease in energetic young people reflects a “brain drain” that threatens the region’s future prosperity, unless the challenge is met by growing, retaining and attracting talented young adults – the drivers of innovation.
 
The report offers insights into the key variables that are affecting Boston’s future economic and social growth. It also emphasizes the importance of drawing on Metro Boston’s history as a wellspring of innovation as a proven way to confront difficult fiscal times and to find common ground and common cause.