[ghaff]

Oh, I think it's obvious that, absent a concentration of world-class research universities, MA would not have developed the sort of concentration of technology-oriented companies that it's had over the years.

I'll just add that I'm not sure how common non-competes actually were in the MA computer industry. I certainly never saw one until the company I was with was acquired by EMC in about 2000. What is true is that people tended to stay with companies a long time but I don't have any evidence that non-competes played a big role in that.