SSTI Digest

A recent $10 billion judgment against Philip Morris may have the tobacco giant filing bankruptcy. Philip Morris has claimed it cannot post a $12 billion bond to appeal a lawsuit in Illinois or even meet the $2.6 billion payment due mid-April for the 1998 settlement with the states.

The tobacco company's actions are expected to have repercussions for several states counting on the funds to finance TBED initiatives. Among those threatened are Michigan's well known $1 billion life science investment over 20 years. One-fifth of Pennsylvania's future tobacco settlement payments are targeted toward life science technologies. And, the Missouri legislature is considering a bill that would commit one-quarter of the state's settlement money to the life sciences, beginning in 2006.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has posted a preliminary list of the 10 U.S. universities receiving the most patents for inventions during calendar year 2002. The University of California tops the list for the ninth consecutive year. The table below also presents the school's 2001 ranking and total. 

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education recently released The Rising Price of Higher Education, which documents the rising costs of public education in the U.S. Using the data found in the report, SSTI has constructed a 50-state table presenting a comparison of the cost of tuition and fees at 2- and 4-year public institutions in 2001-02 vs 2002-03.

For 4-year institutions, Massachusetts shows the greatest change, 23.7 percent, between the last two academic years. Missouri's average public tuition and fees for 4-year institutions in 2002-03 reflects a 20.1 percent increase over the previous year. In the same category, New Jersey tops all states with the highest average ($6,533), as its overall increase was 13.4 percent.

No region of the world encapsulates the aspirations of many metro and regional technology-based economic development programs as Silicon Valley, particularly to the benefits of having a cluster of technology companies feeding off of each other to the mutual benefit of all. The Valley was the global tech leader during the heyday of the IT boom, but is undergoing a tremendous structural shift since the dot-com bubble burst.

Area leaders point out the technology shift is just the latest chapter in the economic history of Silicon Valley — the move from defense business to integrated circuits in the 1970s, to personal computers in the 1980s, and to the Internet in the 1990s. As a result of the changes, Silicon Valley may become a model for other regions in how to prepare and negate the negative side of being cluster-dependent.

Central California's Regional Technology Alliance has changed its name to the Inland Empire techSOURCE.

Annually, SSTI looks at the various addresses given by the nation's governors at the beginning of the year. Over the next several weeks, the SSTI Weekly Digest will profile the excerpts concerning programs, policies and issues immediately affecting the tech-based economic development community.

The states are facing their worst fiscal crises in more than 50 years — the latest combined deficit figures were a whopping $90 billion. It should not be lost on the governors the important role tech-based economic development plays in strengthening state and local economies through higher wage jobs and more competitive businesses. Do their speeches bear that out?

Note: With this issue, the SSTI Weekly Digest is launching a new occasional "Programs with Results" series — articles profiling a variety of technology-based economic development programs that have been around many years and are yielding positive results. Our goal is to help answer the question "What Appears to Work?" with models that potentially could be duplicated in other states, regions or communities.

The California Technology Investment Partnership (CalTIP) provides matching grants of up to $250,000 to support California companies that receive competitively awarded federal research and development grants for projects in emerging technologies with the potential to be commercialized in the state. Begun in 1993 in response to federal defense conversion activities, CalTIP has evolved to focus almost exclusively on supporting small technology-based firms with financial awards and technical assistance through the state's six Regional Technology Alliances (RTAs).

Bay Area Regional Technology Alliance (BARTA) has been renamed the TechVentures Network as the Bay Area's leading source of access to financing, business data and services for emerging technology.

Joined by actor Christopher Reeve and several of California's leading biotech researchers, Governor Gray Davis Sunday signed legislation designed to promote stem cell research in California.

"Stem cell research is responsible research that could potentially save millions of lives," said Gov. Davis. "With world-class universities, top-flight researchers and a thriving biomedical industry, California is perfectly positioned to be a world leader in this area. I am determined to keep California at the forefront of medical research and scientific innovation."

True technology growth for Orange County hinges on a broader, more supportive infrastructure, argues the latest research report by the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance (Larta).

Raising the Curtain: The Technology Economy of Orange County examines the state of the region's health and stability, the obstacles that curtail its growth, and the strengths that will help move it forward as a leading economic and technology destination.

Backed by technology industries in electronics, computer hardware, bioscience, telecommunications and computer software, Orange County's diverse economy positions it "to be more stable and resilient than many other well known technology regions, such as Silicon Valley," the report states.

"California must continue to increase funding for science and technology in its university systems or risk losing one of its most important comparative advantages," warns the Milken Institute in the State Technology & Science Index: Comparing and Contrasting California.

Commissioned by TechVentures Network and the California Technology Trade and Commerce Agency's Division of Science Technology and Innovation, Milken set about to develop a series of indicators to measure the performance of California’s high technology-based economy against the rest of the country.

The result is a set of 73 indicators arrayed across five composites: R&D inputs; risk capital and infrastructure; human capital investment; technology and science workforce; and technology concentration and dynamism.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans has awarded a $6.44 million grant, the largest-ever economic development grant given by the Bush Administration, to Advancing California’s Emerging Technologies (ACET) to expand the Oakland Alameda Bio Tech Incubator to a 40,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art laboratory.

Once completed, the newly expanded building will be the largest of its kind west of the Mississippi, ACET director Sam Doctors said in a press statement. Housing nearly 40 high tech, biotechnology, environmental and energy start-up companies, the incubator will include fully equipped laboratory and office space, videoconferencing facilities, and other shared amenities.