Hong Kong hopesto lure Hub firms

Hong Kong officials are ramping up efforts to attract Bay State companies to set up operations in the Asian city to combat tepid economic growth and provide ample access to the state's wealth of academic, biotech and financial services resources.

"We welcome Boston investment, but to be very honest, I'm most interested in seeing more Boston companies in Hong Kong, which would help to foster exports further," Donald Tong, Hong Kong Commissioner for U.S. Economic and Trade Affairs, told the Herald. "We do know that biotech in Boston is very strong and also green technology. We are hoping to foster academic exchanges and have some of them turn into business propositions."

The region of seven million saw its real gross domestic product grow by only 0.9 percent in the first six months of 2012, compared with a year earlier, Tong said. The city has also lowered its GDP forecast for the year to 1 to 2 percent.

Tong, who visited Boston last week, said Massachusetts companies and firms should consider opening offices and manufacturing their goods in Hong Kong so they could export goods to China tariff-free under a free trade pact between the regions. China is currently the state's third largest export destination, with $2 billion worth of goods exported there last year, Tong added.

"It would not have the same benefits if they manufacture in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia," Tong said. "The only place that enjoys such benefits is Hong Kong."

Switching to bank accounts in Hong Kong also would help offset depreciation against the U.S. dollar, Tong added.

Bay State companies already with a Hong Kong presence include Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, TJX Cos., EMC Corp., State Street Corp., Fidelity Investments and Boston Scientific, Tong said.

Michael Goodman, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, said he wasn't surprised Hong Kong was trying to make an economic pitch to Massachusetts, but the state may not be easily swayed.

"If you're in Hong Kong and you look at a map of the U.S. to try to target economic opportunities, Massachusetts would be a very logical state to put on that list," he said. "It may end up making good sense for business firms, but the commonwealth has an interest in retaining jobs and as much of the firm's economic operations here in Massachusetts as possible."

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Sage advice aids startups

As the $1.1 million MassChallenge competition heads into the home stretch to tomorrow's awards ceremony, all eyes are on the 26 finalists culled from a field of 1,237 applicants. But behind the scenes are dozens of mentors who have spent the past four months grooming their proteges for this moment.

They are a mix of senior executives, lawyers, marketing consultants and successful entrepreneurs — some who want to help a new generation of startups avoid the pitfalls they encountered, others who want a piece of the Next Big Thing, most who fall somewhere in between.

"The advice they give is incredibly important to our entrepreneurs," said Karl Buttner, chief mentorship officer for MassChallenge, which has seen the number of mentors more than double in its three years to about 350, who worked with 125 semifinalists.

Jay Batson spent an average of an hour a week with each of three startups, all of whom are among the 26 finalists.

"Call me power mentor," said Batson, who has started three companies, including Acquia, which was named No. 1 software company and No. 8 overall in Inc. magazine's ranking of America's 500 fastest-growing privately held companies. "I've learned a lot in those companies: Make sure your co-founders are as passionate as you are; keep iterating until you get it right; know that you can have the greatest product in the world, but unless you can sell it, nobody will ever know. And I found myself wanting to pass along those lessons in a Boston tech startup community that is more active than anything I've seen in 25 years."

Chris Mills, founder and CEO of HelmetHub, said Batson pushed him and his team with characteristic frankness from the moment Mills made the mistake of being late for their first meeting.

"I said, 'Thanks for being here ... I'm sorry I was late.' He said, 'Yeah, thanks. Be on time next time,' " Mills recalled. "His point was: If you say you're going to do something, do it."

John Sallay, who has been an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist and chief growth officer at Avery Dennison Corp., worked with finalist Strong Arm Technologies, which makes a vest that eases lifting. And in the process, he learned a lesson of his own.

"It made me realize there are more good ideas than you could possibly imagine out there," Sallay said, "and even as older folks retire, there are waves and waves of young people with bright new ideas to make our lives better."

Innovation Week sampler

Modeled after Austin's South-by-Southwest festival, Innovation Week kicks off today, bringing together several Boston-area conferences to promote Massachusetts' growing entrepreneurial economy. Here, a few highlights:

Today: FutureM's opening night, a celebration of marketing innovation, 6 to 9 p.m., Space 57 at the Revere Hotel.

Tomorrow: MassChallenge 2012 Awards Ceremony, where $1.1 million will be awarded to startups, 6 to 9 p.m., Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Wednesday: Day 2 of the US-EU eHealth Conference, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Massachusetts State House.

Thursday: Boston Angel Investor Shark Tank, where Boston tech entrepreneurs will pitch their startups to a panel of local investors, 4 to 6 p.m., Microsoft New England Research and Development Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge

For more events, go to awesomeboston.org/innovationweek/events-2/

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The Ticker

BRA OKs Chinatown $

The Boston Redevelopment Authority approved $1.8 million in funding from the W Hotel development to help create affordable housing at a two-building residential project on Parcel 24 in Chinatown, rendering above.

Developer New Boston Fund and the Asian Community Development Corp. are teaming on a $120 million complex with 362 units, including 145 affordable apartments. Parcel 24 used to be home to more than 300 Chinatown residents, before their rowhouses were cleared away in the 1960s for highway construction. After the Big Dig, the narrow site's edge became a concrete barrier dubbed "The Great Wall of Chinatown."

"I think the community has been looking forward to one day rebuilding that section and bring the people back that were displaced," said Kye Liang, who works for the Chinatown Coalition.

The project, which won BRA board approval in 2008 but has been revised, is on track to start this fall.

TODAY

• Toy maker Hasbro, online career site Monster Worldwide and Web portal Yahoo! report quarterly financial results.

  TOMORROW

• 38 Studios, Curt Schilling's bankrupt video game company, auctions off computers and other gear at its Providence headquarters.
• Apple is expected to unveil its mini iPad featuring a 7.85-inch screen compared to original 10-inch version.
• Boston Properties, iRobot, Netflix and EMC-owned VMware report quarterly financial results.
• Stephen Farber, left, has been named chief financial officer at Steward Health Care System. A former CFO of Tenet Healthcare, Farber was the founder, chairman and CEO of health care financial technology firm Connance.
• Shriners Hospitals for Children has hired Susan A. Berkowitz as its new director of development. Berkowitz previously served as director of development for Boston-based organizations Ellis Memorial, Schepens Eye Research Institute and Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston.

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Avid Technology shares tumble on 3Q outlook

BURLINGTON — Avid Technology Inc. on Monday projected a wider loss and drop in revenue for the third quarter.

The news sent the Burlington, Mass.-based company's shares tumbling more than 10 percent in premarket trading.

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, Avid said it expects a loss of between $17 million and $19 million, compared with a loss of $7.6 million in the same quarter last year.

Excluding $14 million in one-time charges, the maker of equipment and software for recording music and video said it expects the recent quarter's adjusted loss to total between $3 million and $5 million.

Revenue is expected to total between $125 million and $127 million, down from $164.7 million in the year-ago period. The recent quarter's revenue includes $4 million related to the company's July sales of its audio and video consumer-focused businesses.

Excluding that, Avid expects its revenue to total between $121 and $123 million, which compares with revenue from ongoing business of $143 million in the year-ago quarter.

The company attributed the drop in revenue to lower sales in its Americas region and transitional issues related to restructuring actions it announced in July.

Avid said it plans to release additional third-quarter results on Oct. 29.

Avid shares dropped $1.17, or 14 percent, to $7 in premarket trading.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Upper-crust eatery Locke-Ober closes

Locke-Ober, the 137-year-old genteel eatery that catered to Brahmins, royalty, presidents and even movie stars, closed its glossy black doors this weekend.

A sign posted outside the Winter Place restaurant said it is "closed for business, pending Locke-Ober's sale of its buildings." The note went on to thank our "loyal and valued customers" for years of service, and asked people to "remember the good times." Management could not be reached for comment.

Former Locke-Ober chef Lydia Shire, who stopped being involved in the management of the restaurant in 2009 but told the Herald yesterday she remained affiliated with Locke-Ober, declined to comment last night, telling a Herald reporter, "It's more than a quick answer."

"Psychologically, it's quite a blow," said Boston bartender Jackson Cannon, who owns The Hawthorne and runs Eastern Standard's bar program.

For Cannon and others, Locke-Ober, with its shiny mahogany bar and gleaming sterling silver platters, is a place where elegant waiters served filet mignon.

"We'd gather there to run a finger on the mahogany and emotionally connect," he said.

Launched in the late 1800s by an aspirational Frenchman named Luis Ober, the restaurant's boom times mirror the city's golden days.

Eben Jordan, a founder of the once-powerful Jordan Marsh Co., reportedly loaned Ober the money he needed to open his doors. There was always a table set aside for Jordan Marsh executives, according to the restaurant's website.

Ober's became Locke-Ober's after another entrepreneur opened Locke Wine Shop next door to Ober's eatery, and the two businesses merged. It was a place where the clubby and the discreet mingled. Whenever Harvard lost to Yale, a black sash went up. Stockbrokers were said to rub the toes of a statue for good luck.

Old-timers might remember a time when the dining room was off-limits to women. The old-school eatery finally let "the gentler sex" join the menfolk in the 1970s. Nearly 30 years later, when Shire took over the kitchen she was the first woman to do so.

The place hit the headlines again in 2009, when it stopped serving lunch. The following year, it abandoned its long-held dress code, which stipulated that men must wear jackets in the dining room.

And the rest, as of this weekend, is apparently history.

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Startups fishing for funding dive into Shark Tank

Two days after this month's long-anticipated MassChallenge awards ceremony, Boston area startups will get another shot at winning a bundle.

Six teams of entrepreneurs will dive into the first Boston Angel Shark Tank on Thursday for a bite at $100,000.

"We want to raise the level of interest in entrepreneurship and how many amazing companies are being built in Boston," said Dave Baltar, CEO of BzzAgent, the competition's creator and sponsor. "We also want to show that Boston investors can be just as fast and just as fun in making investment decisions as anywhere in the country."

Last week, the "sharks" — who include Nicole Stata of Boston Seed Capital, Fred Destin of Atlas Venture, Katie Rae of TechStars Boston, Pete Blacklow of GSN, Mike Troiano of Actifio and Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot — began whittling down the list of 72 nominees.

"The submissions we've received are all incredibly high quality," Stata said. "As an investor, you look for an opportunity or idea that disrupts a large marketplace that can support a new company, and an exceptional team."

After a stint working on making expensive, unmanned drones to do surveillance for the military, James Peverill co-founded Rotary Robotics, an engineering company dedicated to bringing aerial photography to the masses.

Its $250 drones weigh 1 pound, are small enough to fit in a backpack and are ideal for both hobbyists and farmers who want to monitor the health of their crops from the air, where it can be easier to detect diseases.

"The Shark Tank seemed like a good opportunity to get some marketing exposure and some funding," said Peverill, whose company was one of 125 MassChallenge finalists this year. "Plus, being in a competition like MassChallenge, you get a lot of practice pitching your company."

The Boston Angel Shark Tank, which will be held at 4 p.m. at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, is part of MITX's FutureM, which runs from Tuesday through Thursday, bringing together marketing and technology innovators to discuss the future of marketing.

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Boston's Cli.pr lets users create without the complicated code

I'm generally in favor of anything that breaks barriers to entry on the Web, and locally grown Cli.pr is doing just that.

The premise is two-fold. The only people who get to be creative on the Web are those with special skills such as the ability to write computer programs; and the content we share on social networks, abundant though it may be, is constrained. Those platforms basically let you upload videos and share photos in a defined way.

Enter Cli.pr. It turns the Web into a canvas. Though in a very early beta, the site is already innovative, allowing users to drag and drop videos and photos from a variety of platforms into a Web page and then arrange and size them in free-form fashion.

Example: A YouTube video from a recent vacation is open on my screen. My Facebook photos from the trip are open in a different window. And I have a cool picture on my desktop. I simply click on the YouTube video and drag it to wherever I want it in my Clip. I do the same with the photo and the picture, then I write some text on top of the images, and I've created my little Web painting.

It feels like an Apple platform: simple and smooth.

Cli.pr was created by the research and development unit at Genuine Interactive in the South End, a digital brand and marketing agency.

"At our core, we're about the intersection of technology and creativity," said Genuine's founder, Chris Pape. "And this has the potential to let people be more creative."

Cli.pr has the potential to make Tweets and blogs more interesting and intuitive. Yet there's a definite danger in giving non-designers too much creative freedom (remember those dizzyingly bad Myspace pages?). But at least you'll be able to make your ugly clip in a fast and easy way. Check it out at http://cli.pr.

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Boston, Dr. Martens will see you now

Iconic British footwear brand Dr. Martens — whose clunky yellow-stitched boots and shoes have been a fashion statement for everyone from England's skinheads to decades of American college kids — will debut its first Boston store this month.

Set to bow Thursday, the location at 201 Newbury St. will be the eighth in the United States for the 52-year-old company.

The 3,000-square-foot store will sell men's and women's boots and shoes — including the trademark 1460 eight-eyelet boots with air-cushioned soles designed by German inventor Dr. Klaus Maertens. It also will offer clothing and accessories, two categories the company entered last year.

British model Agyness Deyn, who starred in two advertising campaigns for Dr. Martens and on Wednesday announced her retirement from the catwalk at age 29 to focus on acting, unveiled her first fall collection for the company in August.

The Boston store's design, fixtures and furniture pay homage to Dr. Martens' British manufacturing roots, according to the company, which has moved most production overseas but still has a "Made in England" line of products manufactured in the original Wollaston, England, factory.

Dr. Martens opened its first U.S. store in Portland, Ore., in 2001.

"We are very selective in the markets we choose for our stores," CEO Mike Vincent said in a statement. "The location on Newbury Street combined with the strong youth culture of Boston made this a combination we couldn't pass up."

A grand-opening is in the works for Dec. 6, and Dr. Martens will announce a musical guest during the week of Nov. 12.

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China's new leaders face tough economic choices

BEIJING — China's economic model that delivered three decades of double-digit growth is running out of steam and the country's next leaders face tough choices to keep incomes rising. But they don't seem to have ambitious solutions. Even if they do, they will need to tackle entrenched interests with backing high in the Communist Party.

The cost of inaction could be high. The World Bank says without change, annual growth could sink to 5 percent by 2015 — dangerously low by Chinese standards. Some private sector analysts give even gloomier warnings.

The government's own advisers say it needs to promote service industries and consumer spending, shifting away from reliance on exports and investment. That will require opening more industries to entrepreneurs and forcing cosseted state companies to compete. State banks would have to lend more to private business that is starved for credit.

The ruling party's latest five-year development plan promises reforms in broad terms. Premier Wen Jiabao apologized at a news conference in March for not moving fast enough and vowed quicker action. But many changes could face opposition from China's most influential factions — state companies, their allies in the party, bureaucrats and local leaders.

"If the challenge is, can they do radical reform all at once, we know that won't happen because these leaders aren't powerful enough," said Scott Kennedy, director of Indiana University's Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business in Beijing. "They are facing interests which wouldn't possibly allow that to occur."

Also at issue is how much Communist Party leaders are willing to cut back state industry that provides jobs and money to underpin the party's monopoly on power.

Li Keqiang is the man in line to lead reforms as the next premier, China's top economic official. Now a vice premier, Li is seen as a political insider with an easygoing style, not a hard-driving reformer. Along with the rest of the party's Standing Committee, the ruling inner circle due to be installed in November, Li will govern by consensus, which could blunt their force.

"They are under pressure to change the economy, but they will not demolish party control," said Mao Yushi, an 83-year-old economist who is one of China's most prominent reform advocates. He co-founded the Unirule Institute of Economics, an independent think tank in Beijing.

Li showed his political skills but little zeal for reform as governor and later party secretary of populous Henan province in 1998-2004.

His time there coincided with several fatal fires — including a Christmas Day blaze at a nightclub in 2000 that killed 309 people — and efforts by local officials to suppress information about the spread of AIDS by a blood-buying industry. Other officials were punished for the fires but Li emerged unscathed and rose to national office.

"Li was known for not acting very aggressively in Henan, to put it charitably," said Dali Yang, a University of Chicago political scientist.

The man in line to become Communist Party leader and China's president, Xi Jinping, has a similar reputation for successful inaction.

In the 1990s, he served as party secretary of Zhejiang province, a thriving center for private business south of Shanghai, and won praise from observers including former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who dealt with him as an investment banker. They lauded him not for spearheading change but for not tampering with Zhejiang's free-market success.

The next leadership will inherit one of the world's strongest economies but one in which advocates say reform is stalled.

Many observers trace the past decade of double-digit growth to changes forced through by former Premier Zhu Rongji, who overcame resistance from companies and party factions to slash the size of state industry in the late 1990s. He led Beijing into the free-trading World Trade Organization, driving a jump in trade growth that propelled China past Germany in 2009 as the world's biggest exporter.

After Zhu retired in 2002, leaders reaped the financial benefits but focused on other areas: reforms of the legal system and trying to close a yawning gap between rich and poor with more spending on health and other social services.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Soyuz craft readied for space station mission

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — A Russian-made Soyuz rocket was erected into place Sunday, ahead of the start of a mission to take a three-man crew to the International Space Station.

For the first time since 1984, the manned launch will take place from Baikonur cosmodrome launch pad 31, while the pad that is normally used, from which Yury Gagarin began his landmark space mission, is undergoing modernization.

The Soyuz craft remains the only means for international astronauts to reach the space station since the decommissioning of the U.S. Shuttle fleet in 2011.

NASA's Kevin Ford and Russian astronauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin will blast off Tuesday from the Russian-leased facility in southern Kazakhstan and will spend around six months on the orbiting laboratory.

They will join U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams, Russia's Yuri Malenchenko and Aki Hoshide of Japan's JAXA agency.

In accordance with custom, the entrance to the hangar storing the Soyuz craft slid open in the pre-dawn darkness as Russian and U.S. space officials looked on and took photographs.

By the end of the Soyuz's slow, half-hour trip from storage to the launch site resting on its side on a flatbed railway car, the sun had risen to reveal a cloudless sky.

Over the following hour, the craft was raised into its upright launch position, setting it off starkly against a backdrop of rolling, tinder-dry steppe.

Russia's Roscosmos space agency spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said launch pad 31 had recently been renovated and already been used for an unmanned mission over the summer.

"Now we need to do similar things at Site No. 1. As soon as that is finished, it will be in a condition to resume launches," he said.

Site No. 1, better known as Gagarin's Start in recognition of the historic 1961 mission, was last overhauled in 1983.

The need for a back-up launch site became particularly acute with the decommissioning of the U.S. shuttle fleet, when Gagarin's Start became the only operating pad available for manned launches to the space station.

The Soyuz's trip will last around two days and end when it docks with the Poisk module in the Russian segment of the ISS.

Ford, Novitsky and Tarelkin are scheduled to remain in orbit until March, covering a busy time at the space station that will include the first ever arrival of "Cygnus," a commercial cargo vehicle from the Orbital Sciences Corp., of Dulles, Virginia, scheduled for December.

Another two commercial SpaceX Dragon craft are also expected over the same period, as are an additional four Russian Progress resupply vehicles.

Of the three men blasting off Tuesday, only Ford has spent any time in orbit. He spent two weeks in space as pilot of the space shuttle Discovery in 2009 on a mission to transport scientific equipment to the ISS.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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