In the December 4, 2006 Issue:

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 Mississippi Governor Wants $4M More for TBED Initiatives
Momentum Mississippi, the state’s public-private economic development strategy first funded with $28 million last summer, could see an additional $4 million for new TBED initiatives if the state legislature passes Gov. Haley Barbour’s recommendation during its next session. Gov. Barbour announced his plans during the annual board meeting of Momentum Mississippi, which was attended by more than 75 industrial, academic and civic leaders.
 
TBED topics dominated the first half of the group’s board meeting, outlining the need for increased public support to seed three grant programs intended to support university-industry research, technology commercialization and innovation grant programs. The programs, collectively called the Mississippi Technology Commercialization Fund, include:

All three programs are to be administered by the Mississippi Technology Alliance, with the state funding coming through the Mississippi Development Authority.
 
The board meeting also provided an opportunity for managers of the recently created Mississippi Angel Fund to highlight their progress toward a capitalization goal of $20 million by 2007. To date, the pooled private investment company has completed two technology-related investments and expects to have $10 million in assets by the end of 2006, and $20 million in 2007.
 
Additional information about the entire Momentum Mississippi program, including the new components mentioned in the article, can be found at: http://www.msmec.com/mechw/hw.dll?page&file=momentummississippi

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Gov. Schwarzenegger Uses Executive Order to Develop Broadband Policy
In late October, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order designed to stimulate the growth and utilization of broadband networks throughout the state of California. Some the major components of this initiative include:

The governor’s office cites a handful of studies to support its efforts. For example, the California “One Gigabyte or Bust” Broadband Initiative claims that enabling broadband access for 50 percent of Californians would add $365 billion to the state’s economy, and within seven years, create or retain two million jobs. A U.S. Department of Commerce study contends the availability of broadband is directly related to business growth, especially high-tech firms. Additionally, the California Communication Association contends every single dollar invested in broadband networks produces three dollars of economic activity. 
 
The press release from Gov. Schwarzenegger, which includes the specifics of Executive Order S-21-06, can be found at: http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/press-release/4575/

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Maine Ponders Mega Investments for R&D, Tech
$190 million? $200 million? $250 million? Each of these figures has been advanced in Maine to support three different approaches toward tech-based economic development. The bottom line for the 2007 legislative session is Maine’s elected leaders - from the governor and the state assembly - believe a sizable injection of public funding is required to accelerate research and technology commercialization in the Pine Tree State.
 
On Monday, Gov. John Baldacci established a new council to develop an action plan to invest in R&D and the state’s most promising industrial clusters. The new group, dubbed the council on Jobs, Innovation, and the Economy, will immediately begin work designing a strategy to implement the recommendations of a recent Brookings Institution report on the needs of the Maine economy. That report provides a comprehensive set of investments in state communities and research intended to generate sustainable prosperity in tourism and high-tech business. The governor has commissioned the council, whose membership is composed of “active, younger members of the business community,” to collaborate with state officials and prepare related legislation for the next session.
 
One key component of the Brookings recommendations is a $200 million Innovation Jobs Fund that would promote cluster development and support statewide R&D. By devoting $180 million of this fund to research in forest bioproducts, biotechnology, information technology, organic farming and specialty foods, advanced materials, and precision manufacturing, the report argues that Maine can pursue continued growth in industries in which it currently holds a competitive advantage and begin moving into the fastest-growing fields across the country. This funding would increase the state’s investment in research to 3 percent of gross state product. Businesses in the fields targeted by the R&D program would receive additional support from a $20 million Maine Cluster Development Fund, which would support industry partnerships and organizations that promote job growth, entrepreneurial training and networking opportunities. The program would offer 5-7 competitive awards per year to business-led public, private and academic consortia with strategies to stimulate cluster activity.
 
The Brookings report also recommends the state create a $190 million Quality Places Fund to support community revitalization, and increase the state’s overall appeal to tourists and to skilled professionals who might consider making Maine their home. A $90 million recapitalization of the state’s Municipal Investment Trust Fund would support local initiatives to stimulate economic growth and create new jobs. The fund targets investments that leverage contributions from the private sector and local matching funds. The remaining $100 million would be split between programs to promote Maine’s natural tourism industry and to preserve its environmentally-sensitive areas.
 
Gov. Baldacci will meet with the council on Wednesday to begin discussing how the new programs can be implemented and how to obtain the necessary funding.
 
Legislative support for moving a major TBED initiative in the next session already has some momentum, as a bi-partisan committee meeting on Nov. 30 recommended putting a $250 million R&D bond issue on the ballot before voters in 2007. The measure would make $50 million available each year for five years to support research programs.
 
Read Charting Maine’s Future: An Action Plan for Promoting Sustainable Prosperity and Quality Places at: http://www.brookings.edu/metro/maine
 
Links to this paper and nearly 4,500 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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Brookings Provides Regional Strategies to Improve Great Lakes' Economy
As Ohio's General Assembly is poised to vote this week on whether or not to join a multi-state/province compact to govern use of Great Lake waters, the Brookings Institution is recommending a similar regional approach for coping with the area's economic future.

The states within the Great Lakes region need to leverage their aggregate strengths and implement a number of policy innovations in order to adapt to the changing nature of the economy, according to a report released by the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution. The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region defines this region as the parts of 12 states that share a common geography, history, access to natural resources and economy - an economy that is struggling to change its perception from a rust belt area to one based on knowledge production.

Using a systems approach to identify policy recommendations for the region, the Brookings report provides solutions within educational, economic, social, and infrastructure contexts. Additionally, it advises that the region, with its 97 million inhabitants, leverage its political size in the upcoming 2008 election season. By working together rather than competing against each other, the region's leaders can develop and advocate a common vision to ameliorate the prosperity of the region.

The region's lagging spirit of entrepreneurialism, Brookings claims, is a combination of three likely forces: low overall levels of education and the out-migration of talent from the region, a lack of a significant amount of venture capital funds, and a culture formed from several generations of industrial employment that is averse to change and risk.

To overcome these forces, Brookings offers policy suggestions at both the state and federal level, covering a variety of topics to advance the economic development of the Great Lakes region. TBED suggestions, which may fall under the jurisdiction of the states, include:

The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region is available at:
http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20061020_renewgreatlakes.htm.

Links to this paper and nearly 4,500 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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GAO Critical of Agencies’ SBIR Award Administration
Anyone connected to state and local efforts to increase the performance and commercialization success of SBIR awardees will not be surprised to learn the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report critical of how well the participating federal agencies and the Small Business Administration (SBA) provide information regarding awardees.
 
In compiling the results for Small Business Innovation Research: Agencies Need to Strengthen Efforts to Improve the Completeness, Consistency and Accuracy of Awards Data, the GAO found several structural issues in how the participating agencies approach the administration of the grant program. Some agencies stated they did not collect all of the information required. In addition, GAO found approximately one-fourth of the data agencies submitted to SBA in 2004 and 2005 did not comply with formatting requirements, rendering it difficult to use in program evaluations and reporting.
 
On the subject of reporting, the SBA was found to be five years behind schedule in meeting a 2001 congressional mandate to create a database of SBIR awardees. That database, to be restricted to government-only use, was to provide the quantitative information allowing an evaluation of SBIR’s impact.
 
Publicly available data also suffer a time lag, reducing its utility as a measure for the effectiveness of state SBIR outreach and assistance efforts. The most recent SBIR figures available on the SBA site are 2004 state rankings: http://www.sba.gov/sbir/indexsbir-sttr.html#sbirawards.
 
The sheer size, scope and design of the SBIR program present some of the challenges for award data compilation. Between 1983 and 2004, the participating agencies – the number required to have SBIR programs has varied over the period –  distributed more than $17 billion to small businesses via 82,000-plus grants, contracts and cooperative agreements. Each agency is responsible for footing SBIR program administration costs, resulting in some SBIR offices being significantly underfunded based on the above-average workload required to administer proposal review and grant management.
 
The GAO report is available at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0738.pdf

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Task Force on American Competitiveness Recommends More Investment in Defense Research
The U.S. may lose its edge in advanced military technology if it does not increase national investment in basic defense research, according to a new report issue by the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation. The group, comprised of organizations from academia and industry supporting investment in basic research, notes that though military R&D spending is at a record-high, the share of Department of Defense (DoD) science and technology investment dedicated to basic research has declined from 20 percent to 12 percent over the past 25 years.
 
Measuring the Moment: Innovation, National Security and Economic Competitiveness depicts U.S. basic research in all areas as underfunded, and insufficient to the task of maintaining U.S. competitiveness. As emerging countries in Asia, especially China, rapidly increase their R&D investments, U.S. investment appears to be stagnant. Both Japan and Korea have already surpassed the U.S. in gross R&D expenditure as a proportion of gross domestic product. The U.S. faces an even more difficult challenge in competing against foreign universities. In 2002, only 17 percent of U.S. undergraduate students received a science and technology degree, while 52 percent of Chinese students did so. The task force study argues that these trends have already significantly eroded the U.S.’s high-tech advantage and require a comprehensive response exceeding current federal proposals. 
 
The current report is an update of findings originally published by the task force early last year (see the Feb. 28, 2005 issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest). That initial study was one of a series of similar publications that urged policymakers to increase federal funding for R&D and science and engineering education programs. These findings contributed to President Bush’s February unveiling of the American Competitiveness Initiative. Through this initiative, the Bush Administration plans to rally the country’s lagging basic research performance by dedicating $50 billion in new funding for R&D and $86 billion for R&D tax incentives over the next decade. This funding would double aggregate federal investment in physical sciences and engineering at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
 
The latest task force study recommends expanding the focus of the ACI to include basic research performed by DoD and to place a greater priority on defense-related computer science research. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has cut its support of computer science research in half in recent years, leading to a severe drop in university research into cyber security and other defense technologies. Other support programs, such as NSF’s Cyber Trust computer research program, lack the funding to generate the new discoveries needed by for national security.
 
The report also calls attention to the critical need for investment in the defense research workforce. Almost a third of DoD civilian science and technology workers are currently eligible to retire, and nearly 70 percent will become eligible within the next seven years. Though many high-tech sectors have come to rely on foreign talent to fill the post-baby boomer retirement gap, the DoD requires U.S. citizens to carry out security-related research. The task force analysis recommends more collaboration between universities and federal defense research programs.
 
Read Measuring the Moment: Innovation, National Security, and Economic Competitiveness, Benchmarks of Our Innovation Future II at: http://futureofinnovation.org/PDF/BII-FINAL-HighRes-11-14-06_nocover.pdf
 
Links to this paper and more than 4,500 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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Job Corner
ANGLE Seeks Consultant, Senior Executive
ANGLE, an international venture management and consulting company with broad experience in technology development initiatives at the regional and national level, has position openings for a consultant and a senior executive. These starting-level positions would assist ANGLE's U.S. Consulting and Management operation on domestic and international projects. Both positions require someone with a Ph.D. or a master's degree in business, public policy, development studies, economics, or technology and interests in technology-based economic development, technology transfer, technology and innovation policy, and strategy. A full description of these opportunities and others is available through the SSTI Job Corner at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm.

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People & Organizations

Columbus State University (Ga.) appointed James Bowie as director of its Columbus Technology Incubator.

Ohio Gov.-elect Ted Strickland announced he will nominate Lieutenant Gov.-elect Lee Fisher to be the state's development director.

Art Garcia has resigned as director of the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund to accept a job with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in his home state of New Mexico.

Dr. Anthony Green has been appointed vice president of regional technology initiatives for Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has appointed Stephan Helgesen as director of the Office of Science and Technology at the state Economic Development Department.

South Dakota State University named Teresa McKnight as the first permanent director of the Innovation Campus at SDSU, the university's new research park.

The Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp. has named Larry Penley, president of Colorado State University, the recipient of its first Regional Economic Development Excellence Award.

The Association of University Research Parks named the Science Center in Philadelphia "Outstanding Research Park of the Year."

Gov. Jim Risch has appointed Nor Rae Spohn to his science and technology advisory council.

Gov. Haley Barbour has named Gray Swoope as the new executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority. Swoope replaces outgoing executive director Leland Speed, who will serve through the end of December.

New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch announced he will nominate his deputy chief of staff and policy director, Michael Vlacich, to be the state's next director of economic development.

The University of South Dakota appointed Terry Young as the director of research and development, a newly created position.

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