If you don’t believe it, they won’t come.

Bill Warner fouls out

Spring is around the corner, we’re hearing news about the Sox spring training. I’d be optimistic if it weren’t for Boston high-tech mavens. Every time I read a local blog, attend an event or read a recap I’m confronted with a negative assessment of Boston compared to the Bay Area.

I’ve been listening to this since 1990 when local VC’s and mavens declared it game over for Massachusetts because Cisco had clearly beaten Wellfleet and the minicomputer business succumbed to networked desktops.

Bill Warner compares Boston to the Bay Area using a baseball analogy comparing scoring to market caps of local vs. Bay Area companies. With all due respect to Bill, one of the most creative and sincere people I know, he has fouled out. Bill’s is not a lone voice in the wind. There are many top people obsessed with diminishing our collective self-esteem and retiring the side.

What good is it to chastise ourselves with our meager digital financial performance compared to the Bay Area? We don’t have Google, Apple, Cisco, Intel, Hewlett-Packard. What shade of  scarlet letter should we wear?

I just don’t see John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino making a similar point about the dismal Red Sox pennant history to follow with a demoralizing analysis of New York Yankee superiority..

I can attest to listening to 20 years of  Boston vs. Bay Area bitching and seeing no results. It’s not actionable. Where is the list of funded actionable issues taken on by companies, industry groups, VCs and State Government where they have had an impact over the last 20 years? Doesn’t exist because no one has affected any change in the perceived conditions causing the Boston area to perform less successfully than the Bay Area.

We should most certainly be concerned with innovation and economic development. But maybe we should be doing it differently with a different attitude. I’ll leave this topic for another day.

This comparison is as effective as comparing one of your children to another. Each child is born with different abilities, intellects and passions. Twenty years of telling one child he is not as good as his or her sibling would certainly not produce a change in the child’s character or motivation and result in a high functioning, well-adjusted happy adult.

So mom and dad, speak softly and confidently, the next Mark Zuckerberg might be in the next room and what you say and how you say it my just affect his decision to stay in Boston.