Boston revisited

The Charles River (Quinobequin) separates Boston from Cambridge Massachusetts and, given the number and quality of Universities on its banks, is dubbed “the most educated river”. There are Harvard, MIT, Boston University and many more. I have been to Boston before to visit the office of my former employer, The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). But they have now moved to a very modern and spacious location at the southern bank of the redeveloped harbor, just across Logan International Airport. Boston as a major trading port, became the center of the American Revolution, and subsequently the independence war. This was triggered by the English heavily taxing many goods imported to their colonies without offering political representation. The “Tea Party” were not just crazy people throwing tea into the port.

Today Boston is a very friendly, walkable and clean city. Unlike in other US and Canadian cities you rarely see drug addicts in the streets. The Boston mayor, Michelle Wu (吳弭), recently added policies to make it easier for law enforcement to remove tents and at the same time expanded the number of shelters in critical areas. She also pushed the Boston Green New Deal, proposed free public transport (there is not much public transport though) and other progressive policies. There seem to be no big public budget worries, or perhaps since the “great dig”, a major move to put infrastructure under ground from 1991 to 2007 (!), which overshot the budget by factor 10, the Bostonians maybe used to it. In any case, Boston is a very livable city today and among other initiatives this is also a result of the “great dig”.

There are great museums, libraries and galleries, which in itself justify to return to Boston soon. What I really enjoyed was a musical performance in the Boston Citizen Opera. An amazing building, which was originally a movie theatre and converted under Sarah Caldwell to an opera house and acquired by the Opera Company of Boston. However, it did not achieve financial viability. It was renovated and reopened in 2004 under new leadership with the Broadway production of The Lion King, and it is kept busy with concerts and pop concerts. We saw the musical “Come from Away”, which was great. It is based on the story of Gander, a small city in Newfoundland, which gave shelter to 7000 stranded passengers in the days after September 11 in 2001 when US airspace was closed in response to the terrorist attacks. It is a very American story, and nobody can help remembering these terrible days. But the musical does not leave its audience dwell on that for too long and quickly switches to individual stories and of course to the great people of Gander coming together to help. The theatre was cracking full, standing ovations, and people had a great evening. I can well imagine though, what the German purists would say to musical in an opera house. But Germany is a social angina pectoris anyways. And it’s why German theatres are more of a highly subsidized mortuary, instead of reaching all generations.

We had the very kind opportunity to stay as a guest in the The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was founded as the Philadelphia Cricket Club in 1854 as the first country club for any sports. Today it is mostly about golf, and even I don’t play that, it is a marvelous place. Honestly, in a world where it becomes more and more acceptable to have loose manners, such a club feels like a beacon of civilisation. But I can actually expand this to the whole of the Boston area. Sure, some say, this is a bubble with Harvard, MIT and all the rest of it. It does not represent the USA. That’s right. But people are luckily free these days to choose the environment they want to live in, and contribute to improve it. And Boston I find a great place to exactly do that.

The future of work - Fu.Se (Future Series)

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the Adecco Group, together with a wide list of sponsors, has produced an interesting format to discuss the future of work in the view of AI (Artificial Intelligence). It is coined Future Series (Fu.Se). This is not exactly my field, but as I am watching some aspects of it for the future of the the construction supply industry at B+L GmbH, I followed the kind invitation to the kick off in Milan on February 13-14. I never go to conferences, but as this was introduced to me as an action oriented “anti-conference” I got interested. I specially enjoyed the podium discussion between Guy Ryder, the Director General of the Internation Labour Organization (ILO), and Alain Dehaze, the CEO of the Adecco Group, on the need to renew the “social contract” in the new context. Alain also was in the Global Commission for the Future of Work, which published a report I found very comprehensive and insightful (click here to download). All over it was a colorful mix of industry leaders, public institutions, advisors and researchers, which made the breakout sessions extremly interesting. With Brad Smith, the President of Microsoft, using an analogy how long it took from the invention of the automobile to the time it shaped the streets, he convinced not just the car parts of my brain (which are many) that AI’s take off point is about to come changing work life extremely significant. I also enjoyed hearing about the research on the “gig economy” by Judith Wallenstein from BCG, which she conducted as the European Head of the Henderson Institute - the think tank of the consultancy. Just a day later, I received the compilation of results and action items of all parallel break out groups. The only remaining question now is not what to do, but how to do it and when? I am looking forward to that.

One of the breakout venues: the library in the Microsoft Building in Milan.