In the August 21, 2006 Issue:

Copyright State Science & Technology Institute 2006. Redistribution to all others interested in tech-based economic development is strongly encouraged — please cite the State Science & Technology Institute whenever portions are reproduced or redirected.

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Nano Roadmap Offers Plan to Enhance NC's Economic Future
North Carolina could boost its economy by further leveraging the science of atoms and molecules, a new report finds. In A Roadmap for Nanotechnology in North Carolinas 21st Century, released earlier this month, a state task force comprised of academic and business leaders offers a number of ways North Carolina can use nanotech to provide secure more high-paying jobs for its economy. Of the group's 22 recommendations, 12 focus on enhancing the states overall technology economy, while 10 focus specifically on improving and developing North Carolinas nanotechnology community.

One of North Carolina's greatest strengths for promoting nanotech is in its universities, the report points out. Between 1999 and 2004, the number of nanotechnology-related sponsored program awards to North Carolina universities increased five-fold. At least nine universities received funding awards from more than 10 federal agencies and nearly 40 private companies and foundations during the period. The task force recommends that universities align themselves with the needs of regional economic clusters, completing resource analyses and developing strategies to address those needs.

To enhance North Carolina's overall technology economy, the task force also recommends establishing a North Carolina Technology Investment Fund.

"A fund should be established to serve as a flexible source of matching funds to attract new federal R&D centers to the state, leverage private funds, and help communities link industry needs with higher education centers and other service providers through business networks and other services," the authors say. "The fund would also be used to provide funding for state agencies and organizations to meet new needs of industry and to establish education and research consortia with industry clusters throughout the state."

Fulfilling one recommendation that North Carolina create an information clearinghouse about nanotechnology the state Commerce Departments Office of Science and Technology has launched a nanotech website. The site, www.ncnanotechnology.com, provides information that is applicable to both a broad audience and users or investors in North Carolina.

Other recommendations include:

More than 40 companies in North Carolina currently use nanotechnology actively in their products or services. The state is well positioned to help that number grow, according to Bob McMahan, executive director of the Commerce Department's Office of Science and Technology.

This is a situation similar in many ways to that which existed in the state at the time of the creation of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, said McMahan, who headed the task force. North Carolina has benefited significantly from its early and sustained investments in biotechnology, and it can reap similar benefits from developing the emerging nanotechnology economy across the state.

Both the report and the nanotech website are available at: http://www.ncnanotechnology.com/public/nanotechnology/roadmap.asp

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Transforming Regional Economies. Oct. 31-Nov. 2. Oklahoma City.
SSTI is pleased to give regular Digest readers the first peek at the four intensive pre-conference workshops, which will precede SSTI's 10th annual conference on Nov. 1-2. Registration may be completed online at: https://www.ssti.org/Conf06/registration.htm.
 
Turning Innovations into Enterprises: A Practitioner's Guide to Technology Commercialization
A name and face familiar to many SSTI members, Dr. Randy Goldsmith, president of the Mississippi Technology Alliance, brings his internationally popular technology commercialization workshop to this years SSTI pre-conference in a half-day format especially designed for TBED professionals. The Goldsmith Technology Commercialization Model has been adopted by NASA and by economic development organizations in the United Kingdom, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky and elsewhere.

Through this interactive workshop, Dr. Goldsmith will introduce you to assessment tools, a step-by-step process and financing resources that can help your clients achieve their business objectives. You will identify key milestones, ask critical questions, estimate costs, and determine an entrepreneur's strengths and weaknesses. Based on his extensive technology commercialization experience in the private, public and university sectors, Dr. Goldsmith will share proven strategies and practical tools to help your regions entrepreneurs turn technology innovations into successful enterprises.

Dr. Goldsmith served as assistant vice president for technology transfer and economic development at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, and as president and CEO of the San Antonio Technology Accelerator Initiative. He was founding CEO of Oklahoma's technology commercialization center, which he helped design. There, his team was successful in assisting 60 new companies secure more than $280 million of investment capital over a three-year period. Dr. Goldsmith also spent several years as director of the University of Houston Clear Lakes Technology Center, a subcontractor to NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Transforming a Regional Economy: Moving Forward Together
How does a medium-sized city in a small state accomplish big things? How was a down-at-the-heels tract of urban landscape transformed into a 27-acre research park featuring a seven-building complex with 600,000 sq. ft. of Class A wet lab space and a 97 percent occupancy rate? How did the city convince its citizens to support one of the largest capital improvement projects in the country one that has already yielded more than $2.4 billion in public and private investment? This full-day session will provide answers and insights from the key players in the initiatives that have radically transformed the face of the community.

In the morning, participants will travel to the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park. The complex's master plan calls for the construction of 10 buildings, raising the total research and office space to more than 1 million sq. ft. Working in cooperation with federal, state and local agencies, the park is a collaborative alliance including businesses, government and higher education. It is strategically located near the Oklahoma Health Center to create a synergism of research science and commercialization. Through interactive sessions with the city and states bioscience leadership, participants will learn the inside story of how vision, leveraging resources, and a spirit of collaboration resulted in one of the most important economic drivers in central Oklahoma.

Following lunch at the Research Park, participants will depart for a tour of Oklahoma City's MAPS projects. Guided by former Oklahoma City mayor Kirk Humphries, the tour will highlight the new and upgraded sports, recreation, entertainment, cultural and convention facilities funded through MAPS. The projects began in 1993, when voters approved the MAPS sales tax, and were completed in 2004. Oklahoma City is the first city in the country to undertake a public facility enhancement project of this size. All projects are now complete and paid off.

As a result of MAPS, downtown Oklahoma City has seen more than $2.5 billion in new public and private development. The initial investment has spurred millions of dollars in additional development, filling in voids and redeveloping underutilized land as housing, mixed use offices, and arts and entertainment facilities. MAPS was the catalyst for dramatically changing public perception and improving quality of life in downtown, which has developed into a vibrant 24/7 community with places to live, work and play.

TBED Program Evaluation: An Introduction
One of the hallmarks of effective TBED programs is that they evaluate what they do. But to do evaluation properly, you must consider why you are evaluating, what you are evaluating, and how best to do it. What tools and methods will generate the most appropriate and reliable metrics? What metrics are viable indicators of positive performance, and how should they be presented in order to have the most meaning for key stakeholders? 

In this half-day session, we'll examine those basic but critical questions and consider approaches that some of the leading programs have used to evaluate their effectiveness and impact. Cathy Renault, program manager of technology-based economic development with RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C., will lead participants in this discussion of performance metrics fundamentals a good course for those new to TBED and a good refresher for anyone on how to successfully deal with a perennial challenge of TBED program management.

Introduction to Tech-based Economic Development
Gaining a good understanding of tech-based economic development (TBED) the approaches, vital elements, effective strategies, successful programs, proven policies, and important lessons learned from failures will make your efforts in the field more rewarding.

This full-day interactive workshop is tailored to those professionals new to tech-based economic development. Attendance is always limited to a small group to ensure each participant benefits from the personalized session walking away with a firm foundation for SSTI's full conference and for their TBED responsibilities back home.

In a format that is engaging, educational and enjoyable, you will discover proven programs and policies for creating technology companies, financing high-tech firms, commercializing technology, and developing productive university-industry partnerships. Attend the session to find out what your peers and colleagues in successful communities and states are doing to build tech-based economies.

One reason the workshop sells out year after year is that it is led by two of the top names in our field: SSTI President and CEO Dan Berglund and Marsha Schachtel, senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University. If you're new to the field, there is no better way to prepare for the caliber of discussion and content at SSTI's 10th Annual Conference than to attend this full-day, highly interactive workshop examining the fundamental elements of successful tech-based economic development.

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Recent Research
Generous Schools Generate More Licensing Revenues
While money is often downplayed as a motivator for academic researchers, it turns out they are more like the rest of us than some thought, according to a new study from the London School of Economics and Political Science. The more a university shares its royalties with faculty researchers, the more overall licensing income that university earns, the study suggests.

In The Impact of Royalty Sharing Incentives on Technology Licensing in Universities, Saul Lach and Mark Schankerman contend that the design of intellectual property rights and other forms of incentives for faculty may have real effects on growth and productivity. The model is based on the Association of University Technology Manager's annual survey of university tech transfer activities.

The findings reinforce those of a 2001 paper, Why Do Some Universities Generate More Start-ups than Others? by Dante Di Gregorio and Scott Shane of the University of Maryland, which found, in part, that more start-ups could be expected when there are lower royalty payments back to university inventors. This would apparently be the case because the best way for the researchers to benefit economically would be in starting a company.

The profit motive for faculty is stronger in private universities than public institutions, Lach and Schankerman find, resulting in private institutions generating more licensing revenues for both the faculty and the universities.

Technology licensing offices (TLOs) in private schools also were more productive in generating licensing revenue than their public counterparts, which may be consistent with the influence of the greater incentives present for private institution faculty researchers. It is possible that faculty motivated by opportunities for wealth generation from their research findings might be more likely to engage in research that will yield commercializable results, although the present study does not explore this. Instead, Lach and Schankerman suggest other reasons for the difference between the TLO effectiveness of public and private schools.

We provide new survey evidence which shows that TLOs in private universities are more likely to use performance-based pay, are less constrained in their freedom of operation by state laws and regulations, and are more focused on generating license income rather than social objectives such as promoting local and regional development, the authors say.

To generate more revenue for a university tech transfer office, public university administrators may wish to review or modify their intellectual property policies and incentives to reward faculty more generously, but the social objectives comment in the above excerpt may be of some interest to the TBED community. In contrast, DiGregorio and Shanes research suggests more limited faculty incentives may be more useful in creating local start ups based on university research, but, according to Lach and Shankerman, at the risk of lower returns to the university.

So the public policy question is raised: How does one optimize opportunities for local commercialization of university technology without decreasing institution and faculty incentives to pursue market-oriented research?

One answer, according to Lach and Shankerman, is to focus policy toward increasing the amount of publicly funded R&D conducted within public research institutions, which is a goal of several state TBED organizations and federal programs such as EPSCoR. The authors write publicly funded R&D has a positive and significant effect on licensing revenues in public universities only. Industrial-funded R&D, which is often for intellectual property owned by the industrial partner, was found to have no significant effect in either public or private institutions.

The Impact of Royalty Sharing Incentives on Technology Licensing in Universities is available at: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0729.pdf

Why Do Some Universities Generate More Start-ups than Others? is available at:
http://bmgt3-notes.umd.edu/faculty/km/papers.nsf/225f2e46a850b27885256a560076708a/
30aee75dc1ee05a385256a4f0051b6f3?OpenDocument

Links to these studies and more than 4,000 additional TBED-related research reports, strategic plans and other papers can be found at the Tech-based Economic Development (TBED) Resource Center, jointly developed by the Technology Administration and SSTI, at: http://www.tbedresourcecenter.org/

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K-12 Pilot Programs Shape Tomorrow's Entrepreneurs
A well rounded K-12 educational system has long been regarded as a prerequisite for robust regional growth. An accessible supply of early stage capital is another key ingredient for entrepreneurship. Can both be accomplished simultaneously?

A recent white paper from CFED suggests yes, public school systems can do more to prepare students for participation in the entrepreneurial community. Linking Youth Savings and Entrepreneurship proposes it could be as simple as combining existing education programs to encourage entrepreneurship while promoting sound personal fiscal management. The result is students building their own nest eggs to launch entrepreneurial opportunities once they finish high school or college.

Several pilot programs specifically address the need for entrepreneurial education in K-12 schools, adding a finance twist as well:

By offering opportunities to learn about small businesses and save money for life after graduation, these programs make students more comfortable participating in the regional economy, CFED writes. Programs that have linked participation in school-based enterprises to student savings accounts have experienced greater success on both fronts.

Encouraging kids to save money is not easy, however. More than 2,000 SEED accounts are being tested as a tool for financial education at 13 sites around the country. CFED writes that many have found matching funds and other financial incentives have not been sufficient to encourage student saving. The study found a majority of current program partners agree that adding school-based enterprises can increase successful participation, while teaching students personal fiscal responsibility at the same time.

For developing regions, these school-based programs create a foundation for increasing entrepreneurship and investment, encourage personal savings, lower future bankruptcy rates by improving financial management skills, and give students the means to save money for college and business start-ups.

CFED suggests an additional benefit is these entrepreneurship-finance programs provide an opportunity to bring together financial institutions, local entrepreneurs, schools and citizens to discuss and promote regional development.

Linking Youth Savings and Entrepreneurship is available at: http://www.cfed.org/publications/documents/Linking_Youth_Savings_Entrepreneurship_final.pdf

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Census Bureau Survey Provides Key Data on Nations Population Changes
The Census Bureau recently released a 2005 update for American Community Survey (ACS), the most detailed demographic information available for nearly 7,000 areas including congressional districts, counties, cities and American Indian/Alaska native areas with a population of 65,000 or more.
 
ACS addresses one of the greatest challenges for demographers and economic development policy researchers -- the availability of current data on the nations changing and diverse population. Prior to the annual ACS, this information was historically gathered once a decade.
 
The 2005 ACS data include demographics such as sex, age, race, education, place of birth, marital status, education, veterans, disability status and U.S. citizenship. Additionally, the data represent the first update of key population characteristics since 2000 for 75 of the top 100 fastest-growing cities in the nation.

The ACS website allows comparison of several geographic units at once as well as mapping capabilities.

The results of the Census Bureaus 2005 American Community Survey are available at: http://www.census.gov/acs/

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Useful Stats
Industrial Support for Academic R&D by State, 2000-2004
In 2004, U.S. industry-financed academic R&D totaled more than $2.1 billion -- a $54.9 million decrease from 2003, according to the National Science Foundations Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges, Fiscal Year 2004.
 
For the 2000-04 period, the U.S. as a whole experienced a decrease of 3.26 percent in academic R&D expenditures funded by industry sources -- 2004 was the third consecutive year that the U.S. total has slipped. It should be noted that during the 2000-04 period, academic R&D from all sources of funds saw an almost 43 percent increase (see SSTI's table from last week).

Despite the national decline in industry-funded academic R&D, 21 states showed an increase in industry-financed academic R&D expenditures, with South Dakota leading the nation at 103.05 percent. Five other states also experienced an increase of more than 50 percent -- Hawaii (90.30 percent), Maryland (86.92 percent), Rhode Island (56.64 percent), Colorado (51.55 percent) and South Carolina (50.96 percent).
 
SSTI has prepared a table ranking all 50 states and the District of Columbia by percent change of industry-financed academic R&D from 2000-2004. The table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/082106t.htm

The Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges, Fiscal Year 2004 is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf06323/tables.htm

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People

Mary Lawyer is leaving the Iowa Department of Economic Development to be the president and CEO of Des Moines' Downtown Community Alliance, effective Sept. 14.

Maneesh Sagar has been named director of investments at Connecticut Innovations.

Purdue University has hired Mark Smith as its new Workforce Innovations in Regional Economic Development project administrator.

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