SSTI Digest

SSTI is excited to announce Little Rock, Arkansas, as the site for our 2020 Annual Conference, Oct. 5-7. The conference is the premier gathering of practitioners and policymakers from across the country who work to create a better future through science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.

“Bringing the conference to Little Rock and sharing the story of what is happening in Arkansas with others will give people from throughout the country the opportunity to see the progress that’s being made in the state,” said Dan Berglund, SSTI president and CEO. “We are thrilled to be working with the Arkansas Research Alliance, along with the many partners that they have assembled, who will be able to tell the story of the challenges they have faced, and what they have done to overcome them. We think it’s a story that will resonate throughout the country.”

While Virginia has worked over the past 30 years to build their innovation economy, this past year it changed up the game. SSTI recently talked with Robby Demeria, Virginia’s deputy secretary of commerce and trade for technology, about the planning underway in Virginia and how the commonwealth is proceeding with a new initiative to grow their economy.

Tax incentives don’t affect a company’s decision on where to locate in a majority of cases, according to a new book. Making Sense of Incentives: Taming Business Incentives to Promote Prosperity by Timothy J. Bartik of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research does conclude that better-designed tax-incentive programs “when combined with business services and other smart policies … can be a cost-effective way to promote inclusive local economic growth.”

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) is showcasing a new, online gallery of successful stories of regional value produced when state and local government entities and federal laboratories work together. The State and Local Government T2 Partnerships Gallery features 11 stories from nine states, spotlighting partnerships from nine federal agencies, 12 federal laboratories, and their respective state and local government partners. Each successful collaboration explains the R&D that produced innovative technologies, and how the technologies have benefited local communities and economies nationwide. The stories are available to download and share, and cover topics such as:

Earnings for Appalachian manufacturing workers grew 3.4 percent from 2012 through 2017 to an average of $63,583. The growth is in the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Industrial Make-up of the Appalachian Region, 2002-2017, which reviews employment and wages by sector across the region. Appalachian workers overall saw earnings increase by 3.7 percent over the five years. In the rest of the country, manufacturing wage growth was 1.2 percent or 3.3 percent across all sectors.

Expenditures in higher education R&D (HERD) grew in FY 2018, increasing by $4.1 billion over FY 2017, the largest year-over-year increase since FY 2010-2011 according to an SSTI analysis of recently released data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. For the 10-year period from FY 2009 to FY 2018, HERD grew by 38.4 percent nationally, representing an increase of nearly $22 billion. Higher education R&D expenditures grew the fastest over this 10-year period in the District of Columbia (78.2 percent), Connecticut (65.5 percent), Washington (59.5 percent), and Utah (59.3 percent). The largest absolute gains over the same period were seen in California ($2.5 billion increase), New York ($2.3 billion), and Pennsylvania ($1.6 billion). The map below shows the one-, five- and 10-year percentage changes in each state’s higher education R&D expenditures.

Universities frequently play an integral role in providing activities, research, and products that positively affect or support local, regional, state and national economic development or strategic goals.  In higher-education’s efforts to align its participation in innovation and entrepreneurship systems, universities’ incubators, accelerators and fund programs are essential in assisting their faculty, staff, or students in the services and support needed to create startups, bring products to market, or provide critically needed funding.

Students and tech employers stand to benefit from a new initiative in Virginia that grew out of the Commonwealth’s proposal to Amazon, which is building its second headquarters in Northern Virginia. Last week, Gov. Ralph Northam announced that Virginia will invest in their tech talent pipeline to produce 31,000 new computer science graduates over 20 years.

Agreements have been signed with 11 universities who have pledged to exceed the legislative goal of at least 25,000 more bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science and related fields over the next 20 years. The first year of state funding for the initiative ($16 million) was provided in the budget approved earlier this year and is expected to total $1.1 billion over the 20-year period. The agreements are all performance based and if the schools do not meet their goals, the funding will be restricted. The agreements and funding are to increase the degrees granted over the number of such degrees that would be conferred by the institutions if they were to continue at the same rate of granting degrees in those areas as they did in the 2018-2019 fiscal year.

SSTI received an Appreciation Award as part of the Association of University Research Parks (AURP) Awards of Excellence at their 2019 International Conference earlier this month. SSTI President &CEO Dan Berglund accepted the award and has led SSTI since its launch in 1996. The award recognized the organization for having “helped develop a nationwide network of practitioners and policymakers dedicated to improving the economy through science, technology and innovation. With SSTI’s focus on improving initiatives that support prosperity through science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, Berglund and his team continue to deliver the most comprehensive resource available for those involved in technology-based economic development.”

The full list of award winners can be found here.

As employers continue to face a shortage in trained and skilled workers, federally registered apprenticeship programs (RAPs) continue to grow as a response. However, the ability to evaluate these programs depends on the quality of data collection and reporting practices. While there are variations in the federal data collection and reporting standards for adult RAPs, new and innovative programs such as state youth apprenticeship programs face a greater disparity in the quality of data management practices. A new report makes recommendations for state and local leaders on better approaches to evaluating the programs.

The importance of business and industry R&D investment for competitiveness and economic growth is a well-entrenched dictum of national and state innovation policy across most of the developed world. Approaches for incentivizing increased research expenditures fall into two broad categories, direct grants and subsidies to offset R&D costs or R&D tax credits companies may take post-investment for research expenditures. Direct subsidies or competitively awarded grant programs optimally target specific activities, desired outcomes and performance milestones (e.g., the SBIR/STTR programs). A new paper looks at which approach – direct subsidies or R&D tax credits – actually works better for achieving at least one of the stated policy goals: increasing competitive, private R&D investment?

Access to reliable and fast internet service is a foundational element for the modern economy. Since the advent of broadband service its delivery has been highly divided between urban and rural areas. Many states are continuing to address this divide and took action in 2019. Several states repealed laws prohibiting local electric companies and co-ops from providing broadband services, other states initiated official planning efforts to expand internet services, and many approved and dispersed funding to develop broadband infrastructure in rural areas.