Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

CREATING ARTIFICIAL GEOGRAPHIC BOUNDARIES

Entrepreneurship doesn’t follow geographic boundaries. It’s one of the key reasons entrepreneurship is so powerful in the United States—city and state boundaries are defined for political convenience and generally don’t impact the flow of people or companies across local geographies.

Let’s use the Boston startup community as an example. What is commonly known as the Boston startup community consists of several cities including Boston, Cambridge, Waltham (Rte. 128), and Hopkinton (Rte. 495). Historically when people talked about Boston, they talked about Rte. 128, which even has a sign on it that says “America’s Technology Highway.” Today, however, much of the startup activity is in Cambridge and near downtown Boston. Even within Cambridge, however, you have different neighborhoods (Kendall Square, Central Square, Harvard Square) and within Boston you have different neighborhoods (Innovation District, Leather District, South End). Although these neighborhoods are a walk or a short train ride apart, they have distinct superlocal characteristics that all contribute to the local characteristics of Boston.

However, what prevents a Boston-based company from expanding to another city or picking up and moving to the Bay Area, like the famous examples of Facebook and Dropbox? Nothing! And that’s the beauty of it—this permeability of boundaries requires each community to continue to improve if it wants to keep the best companies local.

This applies ...