Route 128: Lessons from Boston's High-Tech Community

According to former BusinessWeek reporters Rosegrant and Lampe, the Boston region adjoining Route 128--credited for accomplishing the ``Massachusetts Miracle'' of the 1970s and 1980s--had been the home of technical innovation long before the advent of the computer. Starting with the humble beginnings of such a giant as Digital Equipment, the authors here attribute the so-called miracle of high-tech growth to a particularly American spirit of idealism and entrepreneurship, combined with a happy confluence of resources, ``creative tensions'' and the combined contributions of academia, government and industry. And although overexpansion, speculation and recessions have taken their tolls, the authors of this well-documented, incisive account urge that, to help boost the nation's productivity and competitiveness, the Route 128 infrastructure should be duplicated in other locales, with government and industry providing support for universities' basic research and training of a professional workforce. (June)