“We retire baseball players’ uniforms and have all kinds of celebrations for sports figures, but there’s no place to celebrate entrepreneurship,’’ said Bill Aulet, managing director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT Entrepreneurship Center, who came up with the concept a year ago. “These are the celebrities people will look up to.’’
The walk, a joint effort by the city of Cambridge, MIT, and a handful of foundations and groups, is meant to keep such figures as Edison, the father of the incandescent light bulb, and computer software and hardware giants such as Gates and Jobs alive in the minds of students, tourists, and curious passersby.
City officials hope the walk of fame will reinforce Kendall Square’s reputation as a hub of innovation. “Entrepreneurs are a reason why big companies like Microsoft and Google want to be in Kendall Square. It’s the most innovative square mile on the planet,’’ said Cambridge city councilor Leland Cheung, who helped the effort get off the ground. Kendall Square has the highest number of information technology and biotech firms per square mile in the country, according to The Boston Consulting Group.
“Entrepreneurs are the key to innovation, economic growth, and job creation that we need so desperately in America right now,’’ said Bryan Pearce, a selection committee member who runs an annual award program for entrepreneurs for Ernst & Young, the accounting firm. “When we celebrate these stories and tell them often, that’s how you build the movement.’’
Three of the honorees are still living: Gates, 55; Kapor, 60; and Jobs, 56.
Kapor, whose Lotus 1-2-3 accounting software revolutionized business computing, lived in Boston for 27 years and studied and taught at MIT. “I have decades in the Boston area, so to me, this is coming home,’’ he said.
