As Inside Lowell launches, it gives me pause to reflect on how the city of Lowell and UMass Lowell have shaped my personal and professional development. Growing up in Billerica, going to Lowell was always an adventure. I remember hiding from my mother in the clothing racks at Jordan Marsh (Bon Marche to the old timers!), my dad was in the trades, and I fondly remember trips to Harmon’s Paint with him to get supplies. As a family, we would go and watch the ULowell Chiefs play at the Tully Forum. I was one of the first elementary school classes to take a field trip to the Lowell National Park. I learned to swim and scuba dive at the Boys and Girls Club. As I got older, and got a car, I would venture into Lowell alone. I played basketball at the YMCA, Shed Park, or wherever I could find a game. In my late teens, I would go down Bullseye Boxing Gym in the Acre, or late night at Santoro’s for pizza. Or just drive around downtown. These days I am at the university most every day, I still love driving through the city. I love my office. It is debatably has one of the best views in the city. I have always marveled at the depth of history and culture in Lowell.  Every first weekend of the month, you can find me at Western Ave Studios, and I love grabbing coffee at Brewed Awakenings or breakfast at Owl.

Lowell held a similar gravity on my professional development as well. I worked in the software industry in the 90s and 00s. During that period, I earned an MBA at UMass Lowell. As an MBA student, myself and two other students started a toy company, The Imagination Factory. We sold toys to Walgreens, Caldor’s, Hills, The Learning Company, and other toy retailers. It would not have been possible without the faculty and staff at UML. They gave us space, guidance, some seed funding, and countless lab hours to bring our toys to life. After a couple of years, we went bankrupt, but it was still a great learning experience.

After I left the software industry to pursue a PhD, my Lowell experience shaped my research. I study industry and organizational decline, innovation, and renewal. I still have a copy of “Riding the Runaway Horse” a book that details the rise and fall of Wang Labs on my shelf at the university. When we think about local Merrimack Valley companies like Wang, Digital, Apollo, and Data General, we cannot help but think about how Lowell seems to rise and fall with the fate of its industries, whether they be textiles or minicomputers.   I cannot help but drive around the city and look at the old mills and think about what they must have been like in their hay day, and their decline.  My research has been published in the top journals in the field, MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, and others. It has also been cited in local and national media outlets, such as WFTX-TV, NECN, MSNBC, Boston Business Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, Mass High Tech, and Boston Globe and the Lowell Sun.   My work was the basis for being included in the film “We the People” that detailed the Market Basket crisis.

Yet, I am most proud of the work I do at the university to impact the city and surrounding community. When I returned to UMass Lowell in 2009, it was my way of giving back to a city and university that has given so much to me. I love being in the classroom with UML students, they are the hardest working young adults. I am privileged to be part of their journey. In addition, I am also lucky to work with some of the best faculty and staff around. They care about the students, the community, and the city – that is a rare thing. In the past decade, I have also been incredibly involved with economic and workforce development in the region. Most notably, since 2009 I have been an executive board member at the M2D2, the life science incubator on Canal Street. As part of the leadership team, I helped lead the incubator from a dungy basement space the old Wannalancit Mill to a modern facility that houses 40 startup companies

Why Scott Joined InsideLowell:
“As Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.”  I have the same perspective on business. As part of the Inside Lowell team, I will offer an unvarnished perspective on the business landscape in the country, region, and most importantly the city. Occasionally, I might offer thoughts on higher education, given the university’s importance to the city.  For better or worse, the city and university have a shared fate.”