By Robbi Hartt
Photographs by Stephanie Zollshan
Imagining the Berkshires without The Berkshire Innovation Center is like imagining a car without a spark plug, computer, or driver. Executive Director Ben Sosne boils down the BIC’s purpose to “making the Berkshires fertile for innovation to promote economic growth and social good.” How does it do that? Through a three-pillar ecosystem involving learning, technology, and community.
“The idea for the BIC sprang from a group of longstanding regional business leaders realizing they needed to work together to ensure they all had the pipeline of talent needed to grow their businesses in the long term,” Sosne says. “They met regularly to try to stimulate and impact the economic sector, and ultimately decided they would have a greater impact if they had their own facility.”
With a grant from Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, and support from private partners and the City of Pittsfield, they opened the BIC in the William Stanley Business Park (the former site of General Electric) in February 2020 and began training youth and business leaders, sharing resources, and raising awareness of existing jobs. They added a second location at MASS MoCA in 2023.
“Massachusetts has one of the most advanced innovation economies in the world, but, before the BIC, our region’s connections to the resources driving that economy were limited. We’re creating a hub to make it easy to connect to the Boston-based centers,” Sosne says.
Technology Fellow Jordan Callahan, Executive Director Ben Sosne, Vice Chair Board of Directors Giovanna Fessenden-Fairbank, and Engineering Technologist Shaun O’Neil.
In addition, the BIC provides regional manufacturers and STEM businesses (50 companies in all!) with advanced research and development equipment, state-of-the-art lab and training facilities, collaboration opportunities with its renowned research partners, and internship/apprenticeship programs for local students.
Exciting things are happening this fall at the BIC. It recently announced its third cohort for the Stage 2 Accelerator—six mission-driven startups working to solve real-world challenges—and kicked off another 12-month Technologist Advanced Manufacturing Program, collaborating with MIT to turn 16 experienced BIC technicians into “technologists”—professionals who can bridge shop-floor work and engineering decision-making.
Students can explore and learn at the BIC, too. There’s the Berkshire Robotics Challenge (for those in grades 3–8) and the Future Innovators summer program (for high schoolers), which offers inspiration through hands-on projects, company visits, and skill-building workshops to prime the pipeline.
Want to reignite your own creativity? The BIC will host its third TEDx Berkshires on October 9. “We set it up like a production studio and bring in speakers whose wisdom, passion, and solutions are changing our world—from technology to education to mental health and well-being,” Sosne says.
