Governor Patrick Recommending Western Massachusetts

From the EDC (May 17 2011)

1. I have heard Governor Deval Patrick present two keynote addresses in the last month. The first was at an international business conference at Brandeis University and the second was at the Associated Industries of Massachusetts (“AIM”) Annual Meeting, both coincidentally in Waltham. On each occasion, the Governor wove in advice to the primarily Boston-area firms in the audience to look at western Massachusetts in lieu of North Carolina or Texas when seeking a lower cost alternative to the Boston market. He made it clear that he was not asking the companies to do him a favor, but to make a decision in their own interest. Besides our elevator pitch that “you can spend all day at your western Mass facility and still be home for dinner”, the Governor noted that Liberty Mutual’s Customer Service Center in Springfield consistently ranks highest in productivity of all of their centers.

   Governor Patrick also touted the recent Buy Mass matchmaking event here featuring Raytheon. Raytheon executives spent a full day at the Scibelli Enterprise Center and met with representatives of fifteen companies. The companies were chosen by Raytheon to participate in response to an invitation issued by AIM and the EDC, which included Raytheon’s “wish list” for new technologies. Raytheon vetted the applications and ended up with a strong slate of companies. They have follow-up action planned with virtually all of them, when the normal success rate for this sort of event is under 10%. This week, I will debrief with Raytheon to review the results and plan next steps, and with AIM to talk about inviting other large Massachusetts employers to participate in the program.

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