he timing could not have been any better: Just as his team embarked for the big BIO convention in San Diego this spring, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick sat down and signed into law the state's new US$1-billion life science plan, which promises great things for corporations, universities and communities alike. Among them is $25 million a year in tax incentives for selected life sciences projects over a 10-year period. About the same time, the Milken Institute ranked the Commonwealth first in the nation for the second year in a row in its 2008 Science and Technology Index, which purports to assess which states are in the best position for growth in technology industries.
      The promise of the new set of laws is already evident in Boston, where a mere 9 percent of the state population produces 23 percent of gross state product and 19 percent of state tax revenues. Harvard University, which has helped Boston lead all U.S. cities in National Institutes of Health funding for 14 years straight, is extending its lead in stem cell research with a $1-billion project of its own, the Allston Science Complex, announced in 2007.
      The Allston plan, approved by the Boston Redevelopment Authority in 2007, will add approximately eight acres (3.2 hectares) to a 140-acre (56.7-hectare) area, and add 589,000 sq. ft. (54,718 sq. m.) to the Allston campus's existing 2.5 million sq. ft. (232,250 sq. m.) in 47 buildings. The project is projected to create up to 2,300 direct and indirect jobs.       Does public money beget private investment? This summer, Boston is seeing evidence that the answer is "yes." Alexander Real Estate Equities announced in May its plans to develop a $1-billion, six-building life sciences lab complex in Cambridge, a project that comes just as demand has truly put the squeeze on life sciences space in the metro area.
      Harvard in July reached an agreement with GlaxoSmithKline whereby the pharmaceutical giant will invest $25 million over five years in drug development based on work at the school's Stem Cell Institute. The deal follows on the establishment of stem cell research units in Cambridge, Mass., and in the U.K. by Pfizer.
      "Our calling card around the world is our educational system," says Massachusetts Housing and Economic Development Secretary Daniel O'Connell, who, along with Gov. Deval Patrick, counts himself a Harvard grad. "I went with the governor on his first foreign trade mission to China in December 2007, and of the top 10 Chinese officials we met, six of them had attended a degree program in Massachusetts."
      That kind of educational link is also prominent among business and government leaders in the Middle East. Asked if a trip there is in the offing, O'Connell says yes, a trip to Saudi Arabia and one or more of the United Arab Emirates is "being assembled for the governor's review and decision."
      In the meantime, O'Connell has plenty on his hands at home, citing a visit to the Allston site with Secretary of Transportation Bernard Cohen to assist Harvard with relocation of some rail uses by CSX, so that land can be freed for academic and other uses.
      "MIT frankly has done a much better job than Harvard has at incubating connections between research and business," he says. "Allston is their attempt to catch up on commercializing their science, and we're fully supportive."       Connecting brainpower to production innovation is what R&D is all about, which is why building materials multinational Saint-Gobain operates one of its four global R&D centers in Northboro, Mass., the others being in France and Shanghai. In July, the company broke ground on a $15-million expansion of the center, originally built in 1985 as an abrasives and industrial ceramics research center for the Norton Co., acquired by Saint-Gobain in 1990.
      The company will add 30 positions to a staff of 310, and add 61,000 sq. ft. (5,667 sq. m.) to its three-building, 125,000-sq.-ft. (11,613-sq.-m.) complex near I-290. But the potential capacity is much bigger than that for the 25-acre (10.1-hectare) property.
      Rakesh Kapoor, director of the Northboro R&D Center, says the company has been growing at all its R&D sites, with the Shanghai center less than three years old, a recent expansion at the site near Marseilles and an upcoming project at the remaining site near Paris.
      Kapoor says the property in Massachusetts straddles the line between Northboro and Marlboro. The wooded campus, already a welcoming place to work, will now be home to an open office concept that will facilitate collaboration among the company's 14 different business units.
      "Each has different technologies and materials," explains Kapoor, "so the office structure has to be such that it forces them to collide with each other." The company even goes so far as to deliberately scatter research teams among different buildings to achieve such serendipitous innovation.
      Occupying scattered locations around the area, however, was not in the company's plans. Saint-Gobain began to look at growing in Massachusetts a few years ago, says Kapoor, addressing the crucial question of whether the towns would allow not just one new building, but perhaps three or four. "It wasn't immediately obvious the towns would allow that," he says.
      So the company worked up a 15-year plan, got it approved by both towns despite their preference for five-year plans, and only then released funds to start work on the first building, says Kapoor. No state incentives are being used. Kapoor says the towns have always been great to work with, and there was never much doubt that Saint-Gobain would get the reassurance it needed that it could grow to as large as 700 people at the site.
      "Otherwise, we pick up and go to another town or state," says Kapoor. "But that really never was an issue."       There is an issue, however, when it comes to talent, though it has nothing to do with the local business climate: the low number of H-1B visas allowed by the federal government.
      "Like anybody else, we're competing for the best of the best," says Kapoor, explaining that the full R&D staff actually numbers about 370 when taking into account another small location nearby. Of that number, 60 percent are not originally from the United States. While his Northboro campus is attractive, Kapoor says the H-1B situation is not attractive at all.
      "We're definitely affected by it," he says. "I have between 75 and 100 cases going through. When it gets cut off, it has an immediate impact on my ability to recruit. Certain nationalities are cut off, so my immigration lawyer says 'Sorry, you can't have this person. Wait for a year.' It's not just a few weeks. It's really a long period."
      Moreover, current employees who can't travel or don't have a visa become preoccupied with concern about home: "They don't do the most innovative work if they're worried," says Kapoor.
      O'Connell says the state is on the case.
      "Governor Patrick and I, during his first three months in office, went to Washington to meet with Senator [Edward] Kennedy and Senator [John] Kerry on that," he says, adding that there is also a dire need for more H-2B visas for seasonal employees. "We need that foreign talent," he says.       O'Connell's resumé includes leadership roles with commercial real estate firms Spaulding & Slye Colliers and Meredith & Grew, as well as with MassDevelopment (when it was called the Massachusetts Industrial Finance Agency) and the Massachusetts Port Authority. He says counseling corporations gave him insight into the need for predictable processes and shovel-ready sites, while he's seen the other side of the equation as counsel to entities such as the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
      That breadth of understanding contributes to his role at the head of an unlikely blend of government agencies in the cabinet he now leads, which incorporates the Department of Business Development, the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, and the Department of Housing and Community Development.
      "Because the governor sits as the chair of the cabinet, and attends every meeting, the turf battles you'd expect to see don't emerge," says O'Connell, though getting environmental regulators and business developers familiar with one another was initially a challenge.
      "It required getting everyone in the same room and re-orienting people [to the notion] that the goal was not the water quality permit, the goal was having all permits issued in a timely manner, and that everybody in the room had to be committed to that goal."
      The governor's mandate was "all permits within six months," though large-scale projects requiring transportation improvements may still take longer.
      "We saw some pretty quick changes in behavior of career state officials, who wanted to be part of the success of his mandate," says O'Connell.       O'Connell himself was quickly into action, working to retain Evergreen Solar even before he went on the state payroll in January 2007. Like many companies in the Commonwealth, the firm's technology was developed at MIT.
      "They had operations in Marlboro, were looking to do a major expansion and we were about to lose them," he says. "There were good strong offers from New Mexico, California and Oregon. That's when the governor first talked about his development cabinet concept, coordinating various cabinets involved in a site selection decision, going to the potential user and offering one-stop shopping. The governor sent me and Ian Bowles, the secretary of energy and environment, to let them know that as soon as the administration was in place, we'd be offering that kind of coordinating approach, and I would be in the lead."
      The happy outcome, says O'Connell, was finding a pre-permitted site for Evergreen at the same former military complex in Devens that recently saw a large project from Bristol-Myers Squibb. All permits were expedited and issued within 32 days, and infrastructure funding was provided.
      "We didn't offer as much money in incentives as the other states, but we were able to convince their principals we could move quicker," says O'Connell. "And the fact we did so is being noticed by other site selectors and corporate users."
      Early this summer, Gov. Patrick had lunch with about 400 new employees at Evergreen's ribbon cutting, where it was announced that a second phase now would mean 400 additional new employees.
      Seeking to replicate the successes of Devens, the Commonwealth is in the process of identifying 10 Growth Districts around the state where similar pre-permitted sites can be prepared, the first being at Gateway Research Park in Worcester.
      "Governor Patrick is a closer," says O'Connell. "Most of his career was in the private sector, including senior positions with Texaco and Coca-Cola, so he understands the corporate world and is a hands-on governor in terms of contacting. The CEO of the state is who the chief executive of a Fortune 100 or 50 company expects to talk with, and the governor has always given us all the time we've requested."
      Massachusetts GDP grew at 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2008, compared to below 1 percent nationally. O'Connell says the state is not immune to the credit crunch emanating from the housing and mortgage crisis, "but we're holding up better than other states, because we are focused and we did retool."