By Teresa A. Martin
This week I was out and about ...to a hearing at UMASS/Dartmouth.
The hearing was for Congressmen Barney Frank and Bill Delahunt and was designed to demonstrate the issues around marine tech and inform the congressional delegation about both the value of the industry and the challenges it faces.
Marine technology is one of the technology sectors that would seem to be a natural for the Cape, Islands, and South Coast. Both regions’ Regional Competitiveness Councils (RCCs) have ID’d marine technology as one of the key business clusters for this part of the state. UMASS conducted a study last year which looked at numbers of companies and numbers of jobs that were either within or linked to the sector. All factors indicated that there is something potentially interesting here.
The marine technology cluster encompasses a variety of companies, including the building of ships, the development of instruments for working with the oceans, the development of infrastructure, including IT and telecom, for supporting research of the oceans, and the training of people to work in the sector.
Computer networking, acoustics, robotics, bio-engineering, navigation, highly-precise manufacturing, optics, high volume data processing, and much much more goes into these companies.
There are lots of strengths here – the research trust within Woods Hole, the Advanced Manufacturing Center at UMASS/Dartmouth, the sea and its culture literally all around us, the oceans-focus of MMA, the environmental tech program at Cape Cod Community College ...
But there are challenges too. The ever-popular housing price/wage gap that bedevils all business here, the struggle between science/research and commercialization/engineering, the telecomm infrastructure of the region (tenants of the Falmouth Tech Park, home to many young marine tech companies, say their #1 wish is for solid broadband connectivity!), the challenge of retaining entry level, highly trained workers, the gap in funding for prototype activities ... these were just a few of the topics discussed at the hearing or in conversations around the hearing.
One of the interesting bits of data was that this region – and indeed the entire state – has more than 300 companies in this area, but they tent to be smaller companies. The shipyards in our neighbor states top the list in terms of raw employment, but we have an intriguing mix of diversity and future potential.
This correlates with what we know about businesses in general in our region, that they often fall in the ‘micro-business’ category – that is, companies with 10 or fewer employees. This either suggests that we have a tantalizing boom in the future or that we have some sort of limiters that prevent company growth. Understanding these dynamics – and providing catalysts to generate the desired results – is clearly and important piece of the puzzle.
Another interesting bit of data was the discussion about how truly global the marine industry is. We don’t compete for business within the Commonwealth only – we compete at all ends of planet, and our competition hails not just from Florida and California, but also from the UK, Japan, and other countries where governmental policy supports and encourages the growth of a marine tech sector. It is a complex marketing, sales, and distribution channel question, and one in which strategic partnerships play a key role.
For the past year, I’ve been hearing tales about the marine technology sector and how many hearts have been broken over the years, the hearts of people who believed (and in most cases still believe) in its vast potential and in its natural place within our business environment. No one has been quite able to say why the magic hasn’t happen ... yet.
It is heartening, then, to see that the pulse of that potential is still strong enough to draw attention and perhaps this time around, the time is ripe for marine technology to take its proposed place at the economic table of our region.
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