Business Commons^™

Only Connect: How An Investment In Relationships Among Social Change Leaders Is Changing Them, Their Organizations, And Their City, Stefan Lanfer, Patricia Brandes, Claire Reinelt

The Foundation Review

· After years of leading social-sector organizations in an environment where competition is more the norm than collaboration, many gifted leaders are near burnout, unable to maximize their gifts. Since 2005, the Barr Fellowship has been changing that in Boston.

· This network of leaders, created by the Barr Foundation, is based on the hypothesis that recognizing talented leaders and investing in their personal growth and connections with one another will result in individual, collective, and city transformation.

· A longtime funder of networks, Barr designed the fellowship as a “connectivity” network, where collective actions and shared agendas might emerge …

Is Boston Becoming A Branch-Plant Town?, Lawrence Franko

New England Journal of Public Policy

A decade ago, Boston appeared to be emerging as a headquarters city for a large number of world-class enterprises. Notwithstanding the recovery from the early-1990s recession, and a thriving entrepreneurial economy of business acorns, Boston today seems on its way to becoming largely a branch-plant town. None of the 1980s Massachusetts Miracle saplings or the more recent acorns have grown into mighty corporate oaks headquartered here. This article discusses the risks of having our current prosperity increasingly based on branch plants acquired or established by firms centered elsewhere. Its concern is based on the proposition that having big-business corporate headquarters …

Public Benefit And Private Interest: Chronicles Of The Hyde Park Paper Mill, Jeffrey E. Lindenthal

New England Journal of Public Policy

Until it was mothballed and put up for sale in December 1987, a small paper mill in Hyde Park, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Boston 's city limits, was the oldest continuously operating paper mill in the United States. This particular plant closing occurred at a time manufacturing employment in the state had fallen off precipitously. It also coincided with an awareness among some policymakers that recycling programs were urgently needed to combat a garbage glut, in Massachusetts and states across the nation, attributable to an increasingly wasteful society and dwindling landfill capacity. Efforts to reopen the Hyde Park …

Editor's Note, Dawn-Marie Driscoll

New England Journal of Public Policy

This issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy had many beginnings and, like most efforts in which a theme is slowly resolved, probably should not have an ending.

The discussion of this theme started several years ago when a group of senior Boston businesswomen talked about the need and value of meeting on a semi-regular basis. Their purpose would be to focus discussions on a narrow but important issue — the economic advancement of women.

The criteria for these informal meetings quickly fell into place. All the women who comprised the group would be drawn from within the …

Women, Leadership, And Power, Marilyn Swartz Lloyd

New England Journal of Public Policy

Women strive to attain power because it is the best way to achieve their personal and professional goals. This article describes how empowerment enabled its author to capture the vision of an ideal city in which education, culture, business, and industry all enjoy dignity and respect. Gaining acceptance for a light manufacturing zone in the city of Boston involved learning to build constituencies and rally support for a winning campaign.