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Brain Gain
By Bob McCarthy
Where do the good ideas come from? People. Young people. Older people. People with years of business experience. People with limited experience. But they all have two things in common: they see a void in the market, and they believe they have a way to fill it. They are entrepreneurs.
And they are here in the Pioneer Valley.
Their businesses include entertainment, finance, consulting, clothing, marketing and more. They may work from a home office, a two person cubical or a renovated warehouse. But they are growing their businesses and, in so doing, contributing to the economic growth of the region.
They are risk takers, but they are quick to acknowledge that the support they receive from their peers, advisory boards, professional networks, vendors and customers alike helps minimize the specter of going it alone.
And for that, the community as a whole deserves credit.
While some more scholarly studies call for business and government to convene and confer about how to stop what 50-years ago was labeled the "brain drain," the efforts of the area's entrepreneurs and their communities of supporters make for a net "brain gain" for Western Massachusetts.
For this issue, we have focused on a few of those entrepreneurs who are displaying the old Yankee ingenuity, although nowadays the phrase connotes a diversity of people and professions those who set foot on Plymouth Rock could never have imagined.
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