“If you invent it in MA, you should be able to make it in MA”
This quote opened — and anchored — the conversation at the third annual Make it in MA event, hosted by The Engine on June 10th. Presented in partnership with ACT, MassBio, and MassINC, and sponsored by Savills and the Mass Clean Energy Center, the event sought to answer the key questions on where the state leads in Tough Tech, but more importantly, how can we fortify our leadership and drive economic development, not just in Boston, but in cities across the Commonwealth?
The state is unquestionably a leader in spurring innovation in biotech and life sciences, climate tech, and advanced systems. It is home to world-leading research institutions like Harvard and MIT and a strong ecosystem of venture capital, industry-leading companies, and Entrepreneur Support Organizations (ESOs) like The Engine, LabCentral, and Greentown Labs. Massachusetts has the highest concentration of climate tech companies per capita in the country and is home to 18 of the largest biotech firms in the world, with particularly strong leadership in gene and cell therapies.
At the government level, Massachusetts has made a decades-long bipartisan commitment to nurturing R&D in the state, capped by the Massachusetts Leads Act passed in November 2024 (read our primer on the bill here). At the same time, the state has built a robust ecosystem of quasi-government agencies, including Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech), MassVentures, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, that drive growth through public-private partnerships.
But we can’t rest on our laurels. While Massachusetts scientists excel at inventing new technologies, there remain obstacles to scaling these technologies in the state. We face increasing competition from traditional rivals in California and New York, but also from emerging competitors in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia as well as international competitors led by China. Meanwhile, federal budget cuts — especially at the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and across the Department of Energy — imperil the growth of Tough Tech.
Make it in MA 2025 was full of fruitful conversations to address these challenges, convening leaders across government, venture capital, industry, and startups to identify solutions. The consensus was clear that Massachusetts has one of the strongest ecosystems in the country for supporting Tough Tech. But there was broad agreement that we have more work to do if we want to sustain our leadership.
The Scale-up Struggle: Where MA Loses Companies
Massachusetts has one of the strongest ecosystems in the country for nurturing Tough Tech startups. The work done by The Engine and other ESOs in the state have created a reliable pathway for scientists and engineers working in labs at Harvard, MIT, and other universities to commercialize their breakthroughs. But eventually these startups need to scale, launching pilot plants and commercial-scale manufacturing facilities.
In the first panel, Joe Rodden, co-founder and CEO of the carbon-neutral aviation fuel company Lydian, shared the challenges his own company faced in scaling up operations in Massachusetts. Lydian grew fast at The Engine, starting in the tech translation program, Blueprint by The Engine™, to launching its pilot project after only 18 months in Residency. But once it outgrew The Engine, the real challenges began.
Lydian needs significant amounts of electricity to convert captured CO2 into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Electricity in Massachusetts is costly, and connecting to the electric grid can take years. As a result, the team launched its pilot in North Carolina, where land and power are both cheaper and more accessible — but where the company has had to expend capital and morale shuttling its employees across the country. Lydian isn’t alone: many startups struggle to find cheap land and power for their facilities or projects in MA, making it more attractive to build in states like Texas and Nevada.
Lydian still calls Massachusetts home and is preparing to open its first demonstration-scale plant in Charlestown. But byzantine permitting requirements have slowed their progress, and clunky one-size-fits-all programs have made it difficult to fund their build out. The permitting bottleneck is not unique to Lydian or Massachusetts. But for Tough Tech startups to scale in MA, the regulatory environment needs to move at the pace of startups like Lydian.
Permitting wasn’t the only scaling hurdle identified by panelists at Make it in MA. The state is rich in PhD-level talent, ideal for developing and validating new technologies in a company’s early stages. But for these companies to scale, they need skilled technicians to build and operate their factories. Several panelists identified a gap in vocational training needed for manufacturing jobs. When the audience was asked how many parents were encouraging their kids to pursue careers in manufacturing, few raised their hands.
A Roadmap for Sustained Tough Tech Leadership in MA
The challenges facing Tough Tech are real. But if Make it in MA made one thing clear, it's the power of the ecosystem to come together and identify solutions as a Commonwealth. As Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll put it in her keynote, “none of us are smarter than all of us.”
To address the talent gap, several panelists identified the need for more vocational training programs to build the technical workforce necessary to build and run the advanced manufacturing facilities of the future. These won’t be the factories of the past: much of it will be driven by AI and automation, demanding a skilled workforce to operate.
There’s also an urgent need to reduce the cost of living: the Boston area is one of the most expensive places to live in the country. To attract the workforce we need to build Tough Tech, we need more housing to make the state more affordable for all. The Healey-Driscoll administration is investing $5.2B to build more housing at all levels, but the state can’t do it alone. Lt. Governor Driscoll implored the audience to make their voices heard at city council meetings to overcome the outspoken minority opposed to zoning reform and new housing.
Boston isn’t the only city in the state of course: cities like Holyoke, Worcester, Fitchburg and Lowell are much cheaper than Boston and have the infrastructure to support heavy industry. Lt. Governor Driscoll highlighted the administration’s commitment to improving transit links between cities, with the goals of modernizing the Commuter Rail, completing the East-West Rail line, and making trains run every 20 minutes. When she mentioned the appointment of MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng, the audience responded with applause.
The state’s Gateway Cities program has already seen success in reviving the industrial legacy of the Commonwealth’s smaller cities. Consider Sublime Systems, for example, a former Resident at The Engine that is now building a manufacturing plant in Holyoke, powered by clean hydroelectric power, to produce thousands of tons of zero-carbon cement.
There was also a broad consensus that the state can do more to ease the regulatory burdens on early-stage companies. Panelists proposed creating regulatory sandboxes, where startups can work at their own pace and regulators can better understand their needs. Others suggested a concierge approach, where trade groups help startups navigate their opportunities. After all, companies can’t take advantage of incentives if they don’t know about them.
The Path Forward
Massachusetts stands at a crossroads: the state has led in Tough Tech for decades, but other states and countries are taking notes, emulating our approach and eroding our advantage. Bureaucratic friction, infrastructure gaps, and cost pressures are driving too many companies to build their futures elsewhere. It's no longer enough to rely on our historical advantages.
If Make it in MA made anything clear, it's that now is not the time for complacency — it is the time to leverage every resource in our ecosystem to make Massachusetts a lasting home for Tough Tech at every stage. The path forward requires urgency across three critical fronts: regulatory reform that matches the speed of our startups, infrastructure investment that supports 21st-century manufacturing, and talent development that fills the vocational gaps holding back our scaling companies.
The state is moving in the right direction. The Mass Leads Act committed unprecedented sums towards economic development across life sciences, climate tech, advanced manufacturing, robotics and AI. ESOs like The Engine are accelerating the growth of startups ready to scale and tackle the world’s most urgent challenges. Companies like Boston Metal and Vaxess, whose respective CEOs joined Lt. Governor Driscoll for her keynote, are revolutionizing industries like steelmaking and drug delivery from headquarters in Waltham.
We have the resources, the brainpower, and the ecosystem to broaden economic opportunities across the state, transform outcomes for millions of patients, build a sustainable industrial supply chain, and lead the world in critical technologies like AI and quantum computing. Above all, Make it in MA showed that when you bring the right people in the room together, the solutions to our greatest challenges are right in front of us — all we need to do is act on them.