Relative Strengths of Robotics Clusters

Helen Greiner has kindly circulated a slide about the relative strengths of robotics clusters.  It compares Pittsburgh, Silicon Valley, and Boston to one another.  She circulated the slide with the cautions that it was based on nothing more than her perceptions and that she was trying to be controversial.

In summary her slide basically shows that Boston is in the lead in developing a healthy robotics ecosystem in most dimensions.  Silicon Valley is nipping at Boston’s heels in the race to be the best robotics ecosystem with leadership in some areas such as investments by high net worth individuals.  Pittsburgh lags in most ways with some notable exceptions in government support.

It is all fine and dandy that someone as esteemed as Helen Greiner thinks these things, but we should be able to measure most of them.  Here are the dimensions that Helen uses:

Employee Base

Cluster Activities

Venture Capitalist Interest

High Net Worth Individual Interest

Gov. Investment

University Pipeline

Corp Lab Research

Incubation

State Support

Other categories that I’d like to propose a least proxy measures for are:

Culture

Access to Customers

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be trying to measure these items.  Here is the link to the analysis of the dimensions.

http://atomic-temporary-36605249.wpcomstaging.com/robotics-clusters/