Mark Lowenstein has made some pretty bold statements about what’s going to happen in the wireless industry this year. More mergers and acquisitions among mobile operators. Same goes for the handset makers. Mobile payments won’t take off just yet. And enterprises may have jumped the gun on tablets.

Lowenstein, a Verizon Wireless veteran and now managing director of the Boston-area consultancy Mobile Ecosystem, dishes out insights like this via his regular e-mail newsletter on the mobile industry, but I wanted to dig in with him a bit more deeply on what these big changes mean for startups and other innovative companies working in Boston and beyond.

Plus, the Xconomy newsroom has been a bit buzzy with mobile news lately, after we just announced our fourth annual half-day forum on the subject, Mobile Madness 2012 on March 14.

Lowenstein, an Xconomist, pinpointed a couple of different facets of mobile technology that aren’t necessarily new, but that are maturing and hitting new stages. Read on for those, and some of the startups around the country that are driving these trends.

—Enterprise Mobility: Big companies have been scrambling to put a mobile face on their business, and startups have been sprouting up or changing their approach to support them. “It’s not just about mobile enabling what they’re already doing,” says Lowenstein. “It’s about how it can be an additional potential revenue stream for them.” In fact, just this morning Framingham, MA-based Staples, one of the world’s largest retailers, announced it would be setting up a new e-commerce innovation facility in Kendall Square, with mobile as a big focus.

Businesses that need to build consumer-facing, brand-specific applications will continue to turn to mobile strategy and consulting firms to do the heavy lifting.

And companies that have previously developed individual applications for enterprises are now starting to sell the tools that allow companies and brands themselves to move much of their activity to the mobile front. That includes Boston-area firms like Raizlabs, Apperian, Modo Labs, and most recently, Verivo Software (formerly known as Pyxis Mobile).

—The App Marketplace. Speaking of apps, enough is enough. It’s been about four years and around half a million apps since Apple introduced its iTunes app store. “It’s been terrific, but one gets the sense that it needs to get to the next and more mature stage,” says Lowenstein. Meaning, a majority of apps don’t have a company behind them, don’t get updated, and don’t really make money. “They’re a fad, a fly … Next Page »

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Boston has no place for “serious, venture-backed startups” to grow from five employees to 25 employees, akin to San Francisco’s RocketSpace, or New York City’s General Assembly, says Mark Kasdorf.

Enter Intrepid Labs, the co-working space he recently established in the former digs of another co-working space (Dogpatch Labs) at 222 Third Street near Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA.

Intrepid Labs comes as the answer to a problem Kasdorf himself was facing. His mobile development company Intrepid Pursuits started with three people in the co-working unit (C3) of the Cambridge Innovation Center around the spring of 2010. It grew pretty quickly to eight people, so was kicked out of the C3. The building gave them an attractive “transition” rate to move into the more grownup office space, says Kasdorf, but they outgrew that, too, hitting about 15 employees last fall.

“We had to get real office space, which was more expensive than we could afford as a bootstrapped consulting company,” Kasdorf says. “As we started digging into commercial real estate, we realized how bad it is for startups.”

The Boston area has its share of coffeehouse-style co-working spaces for pre-seed companies with a few employees, but nothing for the more mature (revenues, funded, five employees and up) crowd, says Kasdorf. Traditional office spaces require three-year leases, a time period in which a lot could change for a startup, says Kasdorf. They also require companies to get their own furniture, printers and scanner, and the like. “This whole litany of things that CIC had been offering to us became obvious, but it was still really expensive,” Kasdorf says

In October he started checking out other office space in The American Twine Office Park at 222 Third Street, and saw the vacant fourth floor. “We walk in here and I’m blown away,” he says. “Everything about it screams, ‘This would be a fun place to work.’”

Inspired by General Assembly, he signed a lease for three years, with the intent of creating a co-working space for growing startups like his. Kasdorf and his team moved in during November. While Intrepid Labs has the long lease it originally wanted to avoid, it’s subletting to other startups on a month-to-month basis. So what about that big expense? Kasdorf says it is pre-paying some of the rent, while the “landlord has taken a real interest in what we’re doing and is really flexible with us.”

For startup tenants, a dedicated desk costs … Next Page »

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When New York hedge fund manager John Taylor co-founded Inspiration Biopharmaceuticals in 2004, his main goal was to help his son, who suffers from the blood-clotting disorder hemophilia. So he and co-founder Scott Martin—a Texan who also has a child with hemophilia—set up a virtual biotech company and began pursuing new treatments for the disease. They were a far-flung group: Their chief scientist, for example, was based in Laguna Niguel, CA. “When you’re 12 people in 18 different labs and universities, the lines of communication get difficult,” says Taylor, who is the CEO and founder of FX Concepts, a New York-based hedge fund and foreign exchange management company. “I used to joke that we were a biotech company with no running water.”

As of January 1, Inspiration has gone non-virtual, and yes, it has plenty of running water. The company has moved into its new home at One Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA, where it’s under the tutelage of former Genzyme executive John Butler, who became CEO of Inspiration in October. The company expects to expand its staff from 60 to 100 by the end of 2012 and to file for FDA approval of its lead hemophilia compound in the first half of the year. On December 22, Inspiration announced four new executives had joined the company, two of whom also came from Genzyme.

The access to so much biotech expertise was key for Inspiration, Taylor says. “Massachusetts is a spectacular place to be when you’re in the hemophilia business,” he says.

Inspiration’s lead compound, IB1001, is a form of “recombinant factor IX,” a bioengineered protein that helps blood to clot properly. It is not the only version of the protein to be developed: Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) markets factor IX under the brand name BeneFIX. But, says Inspiration CEO Butler, that product has sometimes been in short supply, and its cost can be prohibitive to … Next Page »

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‘Tis the season to reflect on the past year and take a look at some of Xconomy Boston’s top stories.

As usual, these aren’t necessarily the highest-traffic stories (though in some cases they are). They are stories that exemplify what we are trying to deliver to our readers every day—narratives about the people, companies, and ideas that are shaping the future of technology, life sciences, and cleantech in our region, and across the country.

It was very hard to pick just 20 stories, like I usually do. I guess that’s a good thing. So I fudged it and actually picked slightly more—a dozen tech stories, and a dozen life sciences and cleantech stories.

In any case, our editor’s picks for 2011 span the fields of software, mobile, Internet, security, health IT, biotech, life sciences, energy, and hardware/materials.

They range in topic from people stories (Adriana Jenkins, Steve Jobs) to company strategies (Acme Packet, Vertex) to trends and analysis (big data, biotech risks); from universities (Harvard accelerator) to startups (MedicalRecords, Harvest Power) to big companies (IBM, Pfizer, Biogen Idec); from Q&As (Rob Day, Jim Baum) to company profiles (EnVivo, MC10) to news features (testing the nation’s first car collision-avoidance system); and from big community projects (Entrepreneur Walk of Fame) to cheeky area clusters (top 10 “boring” tech companies).

Here they are in their full glory, our top 20-ish stories of the year, sorted by sector:

Top 12 Tech Stories

Adriana Jenkins, Boston Biotech PR Maven, Dies from Breast Cancer at 41

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I guess Werner Vogels changed his mind. Amazon.com’s chief technology officer told me a couple years ago that his company had no intention of opening a Boston office. MIT engineers, he said, had no problem moving out west to Seattle to join the e-retail technology giant. I thought that was kind of strange, but Amazon has always done things its own way.

Now it appears the company (NASDAQ: AMZN) is about to establish a beachhead in Cambridge, MA. According to a report by Scott Kirsner in Boston.com, Amazon is in the process of hiring engineering and research talent and is looking for about 40,000 square feet of office space in the Kendall Square area, slated to open in February. The company has not confirmed any of this publicly, and will probably try to keep it quiet as long as it can. Kirsner speculates that the timing might have to do with changes in sales tax laws.

We’ll have more on this developing story as details surface. If the report is accurate, the impact on the Boston area, and Kendall Square in particular, could be really significant.

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A few days after Xconomy New York debuted in April, famed biotech pioneer and Columbia University professor Tom Maniatis gave us a preview of the New York Genome Center, a proposed coalition of academic institutions coming together to support genomics research in the city. His vision is now reality: The Center officially launches tomorrow with an unveiling featuring Maniatis (pictured above) and several other NYC scientists.

The New York Genome Center, which will open in February, will be equipped with state-of-the-art molecular scanning technologies, and it will be set up to allow New York institutions to share data and resources. According to a media advisory, 11 academic medical centers and research organizations are joining the center, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Among the speakers at the launch event tomorrow will be Maniatis, a 30-year veteran of Harvard who is now chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, which is also participating in the Genome Center. Maniatis, who is one of our Xconomists, founded Genetics Institute and was one of the key figures in the growth of the Kendall Square biotech cluster in Cambridge, MA. He has long been interested in bringing that entrepreneurial spirit to the Big Apple. “I’d like to see something like Kendall Square,” said Maniatis in our April interview with him. “It’s enriched the academic and business life in Boston in an amazing way, and it would be great to see that happen here.”

The financiers behind the New York Genome Center have not yet been revealed. But according to the media advisory, it will require a total of $125 million from “diverse private and public sources,” and a “substantial portion” of the money has already been committed.

It’s been an active year for genomics research initiatives in New York. Mount Sinai recently opened its own such research center, called the Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology. The center’s director, Eric Schadt (also an Xconomist), told Xconomy in October that his goals included “collaborating deeply with 12 disease-oriented institutes so that we can better understand how to diagnose and treat disease.”

One of the speakers at tomorrow’s unveiling will be Xconomist Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a former executive of Genentech, who became president of New York’s Rockefeller University in March 2011.

Tune back in to Xconomy New York tomorrow afternoon for comments from Tessier-Lavigne and Maniatis on the debut of the city’s new Genome Center.

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It was a little over a year ago that Xconomy broke the news that a movement was underway to bring an Entrepreneur Walk of Fame to Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA, modeled after its Hollywood namesake.

The idea makes a lot of sense: If we celebrate movie stars and athletes, why not the top innovators and business leaders of all time? The goal is to inspire young people to make a big impact on the world. As for a location for the Walk of Fame, why not historic Kendall Square, which arguably sits in the densest cluster of technology and life sciences organizations and companies in the world?

Lo and behold, it’s really happening. Today the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame will be unveiled at a 1 pm ceremony in the newly paved plaza in front of the Marriott Hotel in Kendall Square. To get to this point took the collaborative efforts of a lot of people from MIT, the City of Cambridge, the Kauffman Foundation, and several community and private organizations.

Here is the inaugural class of seven inductees (and who will present the awards at the ceremony, which is almost as interesting):

—Thomas Edison (1847-1931), founder of General Electric. Probably America’s most famous inventor, he is credited with pioneering the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the commercial light bulb. But it’s his contributions to industry that got him in here. (Presented by David Edison Sloane, Edison’s great-grandson.)

—Bill Hewlett (1913-2001), co-founder and CEO of Hewlett-Packard. He was a Stanford and MIT grad. (Presented by Howard Anderson of MIT Sloan School of Management, formerly of Yankee Group and Battery Ventures, and an Xconomist.)

—David Packard (1912-1996), co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Hewlett-Packard. A Stanford grad and General Electric veteran who supplied the garage that housed the early HP. Rumor has it they called it “HP,” rather than “PH,” based on a coin flip. (Also presented by Howard Anderson.)

—Bob Swanson (1947-1999), co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Genentech. He was an MIT undergrad and MIT Sloan grad, as well as a founding board member of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. (Presented by Tyler Jacks of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.)

—Bill Gates (1955- ), co-founder, chairman, and former CEO of Microsoft; co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is probably Harvard’s most famous dropout, and one of the world’s richest men. (Presented by Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc, the PC spreadsheet.)

—Steve Jobs (1955- ), co-founder, chairman, and former CEO of Apple. On his resume: the Apple II, Mac, Pixar, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad…need we say more? (Presented by Dan Lyons, better known as Fake Steve Jobs.)

—Mitch Kapor (1950- ), founder of Lotus Development, creator of Lotus 1-2-3, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Kapor is the one inductee who will be present at today’s ceremony and will speak for himself. Rumor has it there will also be lots of ex-Lotus employees on hand wearing vintage Lotus 1-2-3 shirts.

“This is a hall of fame” for entrepreneurs, says Bill Aulet of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, who spearheaded the overall effort. “The event itself is kind of like The Breakfast Club. These people are coming together who fought at different times.” (He was talking about Gates, Jobs, and Kapor in particular.)

Each inductee gets a granite star on a 4-foot by 1.5-foot tile that has the entrepreneur’s name, title, and one of his inspirational quotes inscribed. (See photo, left, of the Steve Jobs tile, next to an MIT beaver mascot.) The tiles sit in the plaza next to the Kendall T stop, close to the sidewalk, on either side of the new grassy knoll. As of yesterday morning, about a dozen workmen were sweating to put the finishing touches on the construction in the plaza.

Of course, with any list like this, it’s easy to nitpick or ask why someone is or isn’t on the list. The whole selection process was probably subject to all the usual politics that plague any … Next Page »

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New England biotech firms are roaring out of summer with news of fundraising, hires, regulatory moves, and acquisitions.

—Cambridge, MA-based medical imaging startup Lantos Technologies announced a new round of funding and a new CEO. The firm pulled in $4.1 million in Series B money—led by return Lantos investor Excel Venture Management and with participation from previous backers Catalyst Health Ventures and Mass Medical Angels—and hired former Biocius Life Sciences CEO Jeffrey Leathe as its new chief executive.

—Merck KGaA’s Billerica, MA-based subsidiary EMD Millipore said it had agreed to acquire Amnis of Seattle for an undisclosed sum. Amnis spun out of the University of Washington in 1998 and makes an imaging device providing detailed images of a large number of cells.

—GI Dynamics, a Lexington, MA-based developer of medical devices for treating diabetes and obesity, went public in Australia, raising $85 million USD in its IPO.

—Xconomy national biotech editor Luke Timmerman profiled George Scangos and his path as chief executive of (for now) Weston, MA-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB).

—Waltham, MA-based Repligen is finishing up its application for FDA approval of synthetic human secretin (SecreFlo), a hormone-based drug designed to enhance MRI images of the pancreas, as my colleague Arlene wrote. The product has already nabbed fast-track status from the FDA, meaning Repligen will receive a verdict from the agency within six months of submitting the application.

—Pfizer said it will be adding space for 300 employees in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, with a 10-year lease for more than 180,000 square feet. The company had previously announced job cuts in its global research and development operations.

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New England drug developers made headlines this week by kicking off drug trials, relocating offices, and merging.

—Xconomy national biotech editor Luke Timmerman profiled Cambridge, MA-based Ensemble Therapeutics, which is working to synthesize a class of mid-sized molecules known as macrocycles that are supposed to combine the best properties of both small-molecule and large-molecule drugs.

—Inotek Pharmaceuticals, a Lexington, MA-based firm developing treatments for diseases of the eye, added another $9.3 million to its latest funding round, bringing it up to $23.6 million.

—I caught up with the founders of Beverly, MA-based health IT firm Eliza weeks after they took in their first-ever external financing, from Parthenon Capital partners. Eliza plans to explore additional ways its speech recognition software can capture information on patient lifestyles and push them to make healthier decisions.

—Xconomy New York editor Arlene Weintraub spoke with Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of Marlborough, MA-based Advanced Cell Technology, just days after the developer of human embryonic stem cell treatments had started its first human trials. ACT has FDA clearance to test its cells in two separate trials of blinding eye disease, Stargardt’s macular dystrophy and dry age-related macular degeneration.

—The Boston Globe reported that Biogen Idec will be moving its 530-employee headquarters from Weston, MA, to Cambridge’s Kendall Square. Biogen (NASDAQ: BIIB) CEO George Scangos told Luke earlier this summer that he was looking to combine the biotech’s commercial and R&D operations in Cambridge.

—Lexington-based Amag Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMAG) announced its plans to merge with Allos Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ALTH) in a $686 million all-stock deal. Both companies, each of which have one product on the market, saw their stocks drop the day it the deal was announced.

–-Coronado Biosciences of New York has some big plans in the offing, Arlene wrote. It plans to test one of its therapies—made of the eggs from a parasite found in pigs—in patients suffering from Crohn’s disease, will also relocate to Boston in August, and is aiming to go public.

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By the time you read this, I’ve probably already wrapped up my work as a correspondent for Xconomy, turned in my key to office on Rogers Street in Cambridge, MA, and taken a deep breath in anticipation of my exciting new role as an executive editor for the life sciences group at FierceMarkets.

I’m really not being modest when I say that I don’t expect my departure from Xconomy to qualify as anything close to an event [Editor's note: Ryan is, indeed, being modest---we're going to miss him like crazy!], and Xconomy has a great life sciences reporting team in place with or without me. But I spent about 33 months at Xconomy, mostly covering the biotech and healthcare IT scenes in the Boston area, and I thought a proper goodbye post would be appropriate. It’s also an opportunity for me to brag a bit about some of the cool stories that we did during my stint with Xconomy. (Still, I promise to keep this farewell relatively brief.)

Before I talk about those stories, I want to say thanks to Xconomy. I feel plain lucky that Bob Buderi, Xconomy’s founder and editor-in-chief, called me on my cell phone in late July 2008 to ask me if I was interested in working for his startup media company. I got that call while I was literally carrying my box of personal stuff out of a building on Federal Street in downtown Boston after my last day as the biotech reporter for Mass High Tech, and I was still wondering at the time whether I was crazy for moving with my wife to Vermont, where I would try my luck as a freelancer. Thanks to Bob and Xconomy co-founder and executive editor Rebecca Zacks, I was given a shot to stay on the Boston biotech beat.

In those first few months at Xconomy, I chased down a news tip from Bob and broke a little story about the big $400 million endowment that philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad gave to their namesake research center, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. (The experience told me that my sources still worked, even when I was up in Vermont.) Around the same time, I started working more closely with Luke Timmerman, Xconomy’s National Biotech Editor, who joined Xconomy via Bloomberg several months before my arrival. Luke writes terrifically detailed and compelling news copy at speeds that would rival fictional Clark Kent’s fastest work at The Daily Planet. Luke also never hesitated to share tricks of the trade with me, and I’ll try to never forget those lessons. I learned a bunch from the other editors as well.

I don’t have a “top 10″ stories list or anything to share with you, but I’m very proud to have had the opportunity to be the first reporter to provide what I would call in-depth coverage of many healthcare-related startups in the Boston area. Some examples include stories about KEW Group (most recently), Seventh Sense Biosystems, Life Image, Momelan Technologies, and Vedanta Biosciences. I also got to do some memorable stories that involved big companies such as Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB), Genzyme, GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK), and Novartis (NYSE:NVS). The only regrets I have are getting beat on certain Boston biotech stories, yet I feel like I did about as much as I could while covering the beat mostly from my home office in a little college town some 200 miles from Kendall Square.

If you’re still reading this nano-memoir, then perhaps you’ll be interested to know that I’ll still be following the Boston biotech scene as well as the life sciences industry in other geographies in my new role at Fierce. I’ll also be in Boston and other major hubs of the biotech industry to cover stories and attend meetings. And I plan to continue to provide Twitter updates under my @ryan_mcbride handle.

So perhaps this isn’t really a goodbye as much as a note of thanks to the editors at Xconomy and to you the audience, with whom I aim to keep in touch through my work at Fierce.

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Tom Maniatis doesn’t fit the profile of a typical New York economic booster, who is usually a politician or big-time businessman. Maniatis is one of the pioneers of modern molecular biology, who wrote a definitive how-to manual on genetic engineering in the early 1980s. He spent 30 years at Harvard University and co-founded one of the biotechnology industry’s trailblazing companies, Genetics Institute. Along the way, he became one of the mover/shakers in the world’s highest-density-per-square-foot cluster of biotech brainpower and entrepreneurial talent—Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA.

Now, at 68, Maniatis is attempting something almost as ambitious as what he did in his younger days. For the past year, since Maniatis moved his lab to Columbia University, he has made it part of his mission to help create a more vibrant biotech ecosystem in New York. He wants to help create a biotech beehive like the one a few hours away he knows so well.

“What’s missing in New York is the sense of entrepreneurial activity,” Maniatis says. “It just didn’t happen here.”

New York has no trouble laying claim to being a world capital of finance, media, entertainment, and fashion, but it has never really harnessed its potential to become a dominant biotech cluster, like Boston or San Francisco. Despite high-profile initiatives over the years, New York still hasn’t created a Kendall Square-like hotspot to commercialize inventions from the great research centers like Columbia, Rockefeller University, New York University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Comparing regional hubs is always tricky, and depends on which way you prefer to keep score (patents, total employment, sales, market cap, etc.). But consider this: the New York Biotech Association lists 250 members, while the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council has 600.

For a place full of strivers like New York, this has long left a sour taste in many mouths. Maniatis has noticed it in his first year in the Big Apple.

“There’s a lot of frustration in New York,” Maniatis says. “There’s a lot of IP here and it all ends up going to San Francisco, San Diego, and Boston.”

This wasn’t exactly news to Maniatis, so I had to ask, why move? He arrived in New York, like so many others, with a personal dream, he says. His research has shifted over the years from the basic mechanisms of genetics—expression, transcription, splicing—into specific areas of gene expression in the brain. He’s become particularly interested in the mechanics of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the neurodegenerative condition otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Columbia has a world-class neuroscience department—including Nobel laureates Richard Axel and Eric Kandel—so Maniatis says it struck him as the best place for him to carry out his new line of work.

Maniatis has long kept his fingers in the Boston biotech startup community, most recently as a founding scientific advisor and member of the board at Cambridge, MA-based Acceleron Pharma, and as a board member of Constellation Pharmaceuticals. Maniatis also stays up to speed on hot startup ideas through his work as a science partner at The Column Group. This is one of a handful of venture firms that bets exclusively on “big idea” biotech startups, and it includes some other very big names—including David Baltimore, Rick Klausner, David Goeddel, Michael Brown, and Joseph Goldstein.

It didn’t take long for Maniatis to survey the landscape and form some fast impressions of New York’s biotech strengths and weaknesses. Science in the city, Maniatis says, struck him … Next Page »

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Boston has been vocal about its intent to transform its Seaport District into an “innovation district” for fueling job creation and attracting cutting-edge companies. Just last month, the city’s odds of making this vision a reality seem to improve, with the news that two Cambridge, MA-based companies—Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX) and Heartland Robotics—would be relocating to the waterfront neighborhood. (The Vertex move is contingent on the company nabbing FDA approval for its hepatitis C drug telaprevir.) And last year, the $1 million state startup competition MassChallenge set up shop in the Fan Pier area of the district.

I’ve been hearing word around Cambridge that Boston’s moves in promoting itself as a home to innovation have created a bit of good old inter-city competition, so I informally polled folks working on each of side of the river to see if the Vertex and Heartland transplants mean that Beantown is gaining some serious ground.

The rivalry is real, says Tim Rowe, founder and CEO of the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square. “I think Boston probably feels that way more than Cambridge,” he says. “But there is a sense of competition, and, as I’ve said elsewhere, I think its good for both Boston and Cambridge. Competition pushes us all to be at our best.

Actually, the Cambridge City Council seems a bit bent out of shape by Vertex’s move, if you ask me. Massachusetts offered the drugmaker $50 million in public infrastructure financing to construct its new $800 million facility in the state, and $10 million in life sciences tax incentives from 2010 to 2014. In return, Vertex has pledged to create 500 new full-time jobs from 2011 to 2015 and to retain its existing 1,350 jobs. The offer letter from the state doesn’t peg the incentives to a certain Massachusetts city in which Vertex should construct its new facility, but notes Vertex’s plans to build in Boston. According to reports in the Boston Herald and the Boston Business Journal, Cambridge city councilors slammed Boston politicians for drawing Vertex across the Charles, and even voted 7 to 1 for a resolution to name the incentives for Vertex’s new office space, “especially egregious.”

Vertex—which just this week announced it its cystic fibrosis drug had passed a pivotal clinical trial—didn’t jump ship from Cambridge because of a particular penchant for the city of Boston, but because the space is there, many people tell me. And that space is a result of a decade of planning, says Boston Redevelopment Authority spokeswoman Susan Elsbree. “Physically it’s very different: buildings are already built, planned, and permitted,” she says of Boston’s Seaport District. “As the economy begins to take off again, there’s room for growth—significant room for growth. Cambridge has historically been for the smaller startups. They need room physically to grow.”

Companies starting out in Cambridge and leaving is nothing new, says Travis McCready, executive director of the Kendall Square Association. “People come from all over the world to participate in this uniquely Cambridge culture…we grow companies, commercialize innovation, and quite frequently see companies ‘graduate’ to other environments,” he says, noting that just under a quarter of the 25,000 active companies in the U.S. founded by MIT alumni have remained in Massachusetts.

Elsbree also has a bit of a friendlier outlook on the dynamic between the two cities. “We really don’t see it as two cities divided by a river, but rather what is the economic impact,” she says. “We’re looking at the state as a whole and … Next Page »

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Most readers will be aware that Vertex announced it is moving from 900,000 square feet of laboratories and offices in Cambridge to over a million square feet in Boston.

Some are asking if this spells serious trouble in Cambridge. This question surprises me. Cambridge is one of the world’s most important sources of next-generation technology and companies, and regularly exports them. A 2009 Kaufmann Foundation study showed that MIT spin-outs alone, if collected together, would rank as the 11th largest economy in the world. Vertex and its Telaprevir hepatitis C drug, which is on the verge of approval by the FDA, follow a time-honored tradition.

Once ideas are proven, those pursuing them should and do move into production mode. Sometimes that means taking larger, cheaper space elsewhere. When this happens, it makes room for another generation of new companies in Cambridge. While nobody wants to lose a taxpayer, Cambridge should feel proud of the contributions it makes to the rest of the world.

For nearly 400 years, Cambridge’s powerful blend of intellectual and entrepreneurial oomph has given the city an enviable self-renewing quality. Let’s look at the record. It starts with the book. Cambridge printed the first book in North America 370 years ago. About that time, it also became home to its first university, Harvard. The first computer (the Mark II) and the Internet (then called the Arpanet) came out of Cambridge. Thomas Watson placed the first two-way telephone call from his lab in Kendall Square, the wires stretching across the river to Alexander Graham Bell’s home on Beacon Hill. Some other Cambridge creations include the microwave oven, the sewing machine, instant photography, ship-to-ship radar, synthesis of penicillin and quinine, fractionation of blood, and deployment of vaccines. Many of Cambridge’s inventions today are so complex, the inventors win Nobel Prizes while most of us don’t even understand them.

(If you want the full background on these inventions and others, you are in luck. The Cambridge Historical Society is readying a comprehensive website on the history of invention in Cambridge. Send a note to innovation@cambridgehistory.org if you’d like to be notified when it’s up.)

Cambridge has launched some pretty interesting ideas in other departments as well. … Next Page »

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With 2010 almost in the books—and a lot of people grounded by the Northeast blizzard—it seems like a good time to take a break and look back at some of Xconomy Boston’s top stories of the year.

These are not necessarily the ones that generated the most traffic (although in some cases they did). Instead, they are stories that best exemplify what we try to deliver to our readers day in and day out—the stories behind the companies, ideas, and people that are helping to create the future of innovation in our network of cities.

Our Boston editor’s picks span a wide range of subjects, from young startups (Baydin, Krush, Energesis) to established public companies (Genzyme, Vertex, Unica, Progress Software), from software and information technology to life sciences, biotech, and energy. They range from unique breaking news stories (Resveratrol) to in-depth features (TripAdvisor), Q&As (John Glaser, Arif Padaria), and commentary/analysis (entrepreneurial Walk of Fame).

Without further ado, here are our top 20 stories of 2010, sorted by sector:

Top 10 Tech Stories

Krush Founder Gina Ashe, Survivor of Horrific Car Crash, Has New Lease on Startup Life

Q&A on Startups and Investing Strategy with Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s “State Angel” Arif Padaria

Why Rich Levandov Invested Early in Zynga, and Why It Took Off—Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Consider

Twitter Plea Helps Baydin Get Seed Money from Angel Investor Dave McClure; Startup Moving to the Valley Next Month

Kendall Square Wants an Entrepreneurial Walk of Fame—and So Should Every Innovation Hub

The Unica Story: Yuchun Lee’s Journey from MIT Blackjack Team to IBM Acquisition

Is Boston Becoming a Hub for Female Tech Entrepreneurs? Maybe, and Here’s Why

Tim Berners-Lee and Group of Boston Web Gurus Leading New MIT Class to Get Linked Data to Market

Reinventing Progress Software—Boston’s Next Billion-Dollar Company?

TripAdvisor: The Travel Company That’s Really All About Data

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Top 10 Life Sciences Stories

Avila Therapeutics Pursuing Rival to Lung Cancer Drug in Dana-Farber Lawsuit

Energesis Pharmaceuticals, Co-Founded by Sirtris Vet, Seeks to Tap Power of “Good Fat” in Fighting Obesity and Diabetes

Genzyme Boss Henri Termeer Not Ready to Sell to Sanofi, Ride Into the Sunset, Sources Say

Former Sirtris Execs’ Nonprofit Starts Selling Resveratrol with Potential Anti-Aging Effects Online

John Glaser, Boston’s Top Hospital Geek, Talks About Obama’s Health IT Plan and Getting Booted from Catholic School

Vertex, Worth $7.5B, Eagerly Awaits Final Proof that Hepatitis C Drug Works

Cooking with the Genzyme Recipe: New Players Funding Rare Disease Drugs in Boston

The Genetics Institute Alumni: Where Are They Now?

Prominent Flatley Family Launches Boston Nonprofit for Cystic Fibrosis Drug Research

Chairman Bill Young: Next Biogen Idec CEO May Be a Scientist

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The third quarter of 2010 is going out with a monsoon in New England. It seems like a good time to hole up indoors and look back at some of the top stories we’ve done at Xconomy Boston over the past three months.

These are our editors’ picks. They aren’t necessarily the ones that got the most traffic or the most attention. Rather, they are stories that highlight our unique style of on-the-scene reporting and in-depth analysis, and will stand the test of time. They range from startup profiles in health IT, security software, and drug development, to analysis pieces on leading companies’ acquisition and expansion strategies, to unique venture capital perspectives and quirky, strange-but-true facts about New England innovation leaders.

So, without further ado, here are our top 20 stories of the third quarter, in reverse chronological order (plus a bonus story, in honor of Unica founder Yuchun Lee, a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team, selling his company to IBM for $21 a share):

Genzyme Boss Henri Termeer Not Ready to Sell to Sanofi, Ride Into the Sunset, Sources Say

MeYou Health Enters Social Gaming Realm with Daily Challenge for Improving Well-Being

IBM’s Software Acquisition Strategy in Massachusetts (Plus Tips on Getting Acquired) From VP Mike Loria

Skyhook, Fighting for Its Life in Suit Against Google, Cries Foul: “Call in the Referees and Review the Tape”

Bluebird Bio, Third Rock & Genzyme’s Gene Therapy Bet, Shows Promise for Blood Disorder

Who Knew? Part 3: Xconomy Uncovers Even More Strange-But-True Facts About Boston’s Innovation Leaders

PerkinElmer Expects to Make Acquisitions After $500M Business Sale: CEO Talks Boston-Area Talent and Growth in Software, Imaging

A123 Opens Lithium Ion Battery Plant in Michigan, Wants to Create Global Hub for Electric Vehicles

Good Start Genetics Emerges from Stealth with $18M Series A Round

Reality Show Project Seeks to Capture MassChallenge Competitors in Their Entrepreneurial Element

Vertex Nails Third Big Trial With Hepatitis C Drug, In Toughest Patients to Treat … Next Page »

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Of all the tech news we had last week, I thought the most interesting was what our Xconomists had to say about Qualcomm, past and future. We’ve got the wrap on that, along with the rest of what happened in San Diego.

—San Diego’s EvoNexus, the free tech incubator created last year by the CommNexus telecom industry group, is graduating two companies in the next month or two. IO Semiconductor, a chip design startup that recently raised $8 million in capital, is now able to exist on its own; and EcoATM, which is automating the cell phone trade-in and buy-back process, is leasing its own office space after raising about $4 million.

—I profiled Encinitas, CA-based Oceanhouse Media, founded in 2009 by Michel Kripalani of Presto Studios, the now defunct San Diego-based computer video game developer. After landing a licensing agreement with Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Oceanhouse has been producing digital versions of 44 Dr. Seuss children’s books for the iPad and other Apple devices. Kripalani told me, “We’re helping old school publishing companies move to the digital age, and in the process we’re creating a new publishing house.”

—Xconomy invited some local wireless experts and a few of our top editorial advisors, or Xconomists, to discuss the factors that helped Qualcomm reach its 25th anniversary, an achievement the San Diego wireless giant has been observing all year. As Boston Xconomist Mark Lowenstein put it, “Qualcomm is to wireless what Intel is to the PC Industry.“

—A campaign to create an Entrepreneurial Walk of Fame in Kendall Square, which is a center of technology in Cambridge, MA, prompted Connect CEO Duane Roth to send an e-mail about the San Diego nonprofit’s own Entrepreneurial Hall of Fame. Roth says Connect has inducted nine Hall of Famers since 2005 for achieving “distinction over the years for founding, leading or advancing a San Diego life sciences or technology-based business organization. Such entrepreneurs have contributed to our region individually and, through their organizations, to the business sectors that shape our local economy and improve our quality of life.”

—San Diego’s Finistere Ventures, which has maintained a low profile since it was founded five years ago, is laying the groundwork to raise another venture fund next year. The VC firm invests in industrial and agricultural biotech as well as in medical devices. How big will the new fund be? Managing Director Bruce J. “Jay” Brumfield wouldn’t tell me, but he says it will exceed the $35 million that Finistere raised in two pools from its investors in New Zealand and the Chicago area.

—San Diego’s EMN8 has raised $3.1 million in a combination of equity, debt, and options convertible to EMN8 stock. The startup company, which makes automated kiosks that make it easier to order fast food, movie tickets, and other merchandise, raised more than $14.4 million in March.

—Xconomy’s Thea Chard profiled ValueAppeal, a Seattle startup that’s giving San Diego-based EasyTaxFix some competition by offering an easy way for homeowners to evaluate their property tax assessment online—and to file an electronic property tax appeal that could save them money. I profiled EasyTaxFix in 2008.

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All in all, I’d say the first Xconomy H-O-R-S-E basketball tournament, held last Friday afternoon, was an unqualified success. Not for my Xconomy team (Xconomy I), which flamed out in the first round—some guy with the initials GH couldn’t buy a bucket—but rather for the couple dozen folks who showed up from the local startup and innovation community. They represented Dogpatch Labs, MITER, MIT, and various companies and organizations around Kendall Square.

I didn’t get everyone’s last name (and in some cases I might have the first name wrong), but thanks to all the teams who participated: Matt and Julia (We Thought We Were Old Until We Got Here), Laura and Paul (Plummelo), Sergio and Erdin (MITER), Mitch and John (Animal Cracker), Harry and Peter (Evil Doctor Loss), Shobin and Colin (Uncreative), Pedro and Raj (Praj), Richard and Larry (Rarry), Nate and Wes (Neuroscientists), Nir and Matt (Redemption), and Mara and Erin (Xconomy II).

The Final Four were Neuroscientists (who knocked my team out), Redemption, Rarry, and Phoenix. Those of you paying super-close attention will notice that Phoenix was not one of the teams previously listed above. That’s because they were a late entrant, composed of Chris Pirie (another representative of MITER) and our very own Bob Buderi, Xconomy’s CEO, who got himself a real partner when it counted.

(* Bob was my original partner on Xconomy I. After Chris showed up, we drew names to set up a new team because of the way the bracket worked out. After several attempts to recruit other players, Bob took the open slot as Chris’s partner. Some would argue that any achievements by Phoenix must be accompanied by an asterisk. Let’s move on.)

The riveting final pitted Rarry against—you guessed it—Phoenix. A battle of old friends. Of colleagues. Of former colleagues. It came down to the final shot, as we knew it would. I can’t remember exactly what happened (I was eating ice cream), but in the end, Phoenix (*) won the title.

Let’s do it again sometime soon. In the meantime, here are some photos from that afternoon, snapped by the Xconomy crew (click on them for larger versions):

Chris Pirie’s arrival:

No dunking allowed:

The official tournament bracket:

More photos on the next page, including the winner of the “most innovative shot” award… … Next Page »

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Merck (NYSE: MRK) announced plans to shutter its research site in Cambridge, MA’s Kendall Square neighborhood alongside seven other research facilities worldwide over the next two years. It will also phase out another eight manufacturing sites, as part a restructuring plan that follows its November 2009 merger with Schering-Plough. Some of the Kendall Square research operations will shift across the river to Merck’s facility in Boston’s Longwood Medical Area, a company spokesman told me. New Jersey-based Merck previously announced plans to cut 15 percent of its combined 100,000-person workforce, and the moves announced today will fall under that umbrella.

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This deal has a little bit of everything. A compelling startup story, technology used by millions of consumers, big company strategy and competition, antitrust issues, and, on top of all that, a really significant local innovation angle.

I’m talking, of course, about last week’s $700 million acquisition of Cambridge, MA-based ITA Software by Google. ITA’s technology powers the flight itinerary search and pricing engines for major airlines and travel sites like Orbitz, Kayak, and Bing Travel. Yes, this deal means Google, the Internet search king, is now trying to carve out a specialty in the lucrative travel search business, for better or worse. (For more reportage on the deal, you can read the New York Times, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Forrester Research, Tnooz, and others.)

Unfortunately, Google and ITA aren’t saying much of anything interesting publicly. It’s probably hopeless to guess what Google’s true intentions are, or why it waited until now to enter the sector. Travel search is an area in which Microsoft took an early lead over Google in 2008, after the Redmond, WA-based software giant acquired Farecast, a Seattle-based airfare predictor startup. My guess is that Google is staying mum partly to keep its competitors in the dark, and is allowing ITA some time to adjust to its new owner.

So instead of talking to the principals on the record, I’ve been talking with outside sources in the travel and consumer tech industries. The impact of the deal is definitely being felt all around the country, including in the Seattle area, which is known for its travel giants like Expedia and Bing Travel, and upstarts such as InsideTrip, Raveable, Yapta, TripHub, Off & Away, and TravelPost.

Here are three threads to watch, both locally and nationally:

1. Google just got much bigger in Boston.

If you’ve been away from the MIT area for a couple years, like I have, you’ll find things have really changed when it comes to the search giant’s presence. First of all, Google’s Kendall Square office has been growing fast since late 2007, when it had about 100 employees. Now the ITA deal—assuming it passes a federal antitrust review—means Google will have a huge presence in Kendall Square, more than doubling its local staff. Adding roughly 500 new employees from ITA should have a … Next Page »

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(Updated—6/15/10 at 8:35 am Eastern time) Bill Mitchell, an academic expert in urban design who helped oversee the $1 billion development project on MIT’s main campus in Kendall Square, died on June 11 after a long bout with cancer, according to MIT News. He was 65.

Mitchell, who joined the MIT faculty in 1992, was the former dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and a professor at the MIT Media Lab. According to MIT News, he pioneered approaches of weaving together principles of design and technology to enable cities to limit the use of resources and better serve the needs of citizens. For example, MIT reports that he proposed the development of the “CityCar,” a lightweight, folding electric vehicle that people would share and store in convenient locations throughout their cities.

Mitchell’s legacy is literally cemented in Kendall Square. He served as architectural advisor to former MIT president Charles Vest for the $1 billion project that brought the school some of its landmark buildings, including the Stata Center (designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry) and the Media Lab Complex (the brainchild of the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki).

“[Mitchell's] guidance was essential in the transformation of our physical campus,” Vest told MIT News. “He was a wonderful friend and colleague who brightened MIT and respected and advanced the human experience of our faculty, students, and staff.”

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder and chairman of the One Laptop per Child Foundation in Cambridge, MA, is the co-founder and former director of the MIT Media Lab who knew Mitchell for decades. Negroponte says he first met Mitchell at Yale University, where Mitchell was a student and Negroponte was a visiting faculty member.

“Bill’s understanding of architecture and of cities, provided a unique point of view on technology in general and computers in particular,” Negroponte said in an e-mail. “Frank Gehry would not have been Frank Gehry without him. Urban transport will under go the same kind of transformation because of Bill’s work.” (Editor’s note: The previous two paragraphs were added this morning to this story, which was initially published late yesterday afternoon.)

For more on Mitchell’s long list of contributions to MIT and the field of architecture, you can read his full obituary from MIT News. Here’s a link to some of Mitchell’s lecture on the MIT World website. Xconomy is seeking additional insights about Mitchell from his former MIT colleagues, and we hope to share those as we receive them. (Editor’s note: This paragraph was modified from its original version to include a link to Mitchell’s lectures.)

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