Dr. Robert Krim’s work over the past 20 years has been focused on Boston’s four centuries innovation. He worked with a team to establish a very broad organization – The Boston History and Innovation Collaborative – which involved hundreds in carefully researching and documenting innovations which had originated in Greater Boston/Massachusetts and which had changed the nation or the world. They developed several key products from based on their research.
They documented 450 innovations which met the “changed the nation/world” criteria. They raised millions of dollars to do this study, and had a distinguished Academic Advising Council to carefully oversee the history, and the analysis of the cases. No city that we know of has done a study such as this.
A couple of major outcomes from the study:
- A year-old book by Robert Krim and Alan Earls, Boston Made: From Revolution to Robotics, Innovations that Changed the World, Distributed by Penguin Random House.
- A Major permanent Exhibit at Boston’s Logan Airport Terminal C to E – Four Hundred Years of Innovation: From Mass.to the World – which highlights 50 major innovations, originated in Massachusetts which changed the World – Dr. Krim was the principal creator.
- A Children’s Book: Stephen Krensky, What’s the Big Idea? Four Centuries of Innovation in Boston. Charlesbridge, 2008
- The Innovation Odyssey – a bus tour from 2000-2008 with an actor doing 8 major sites of Boston’s Innovation history, Jon Lipsky Playwright.
- And most recently – The Innovation Trail – a self-guided tour of historical innovation in Cambridge and Boston.
Dr. Krim and Scott Kirsner will be presenting 400 Years of Innovation in 45 Minutes at History Camp Boston on August 13 and guiding a tour, The Innovation Trail, on Sunday, August 14. If you don’t have your tickets for the Sunday tour, get them here.