SSTI Digest

The Communities That Work Partnership, a national project to support industry-led workforce development efforts, has released seven case studies highlighting what it considers to be best practices for regions seeking ways to strengthen talent pipelines for local employers and improve access to quality employment for jobseekers. Launched in April 2015 by the Aspen Institute Workforce Strategies Initiative and the Economic Development Administration, with additional support from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the partnership has two goals: to accelerate regional economic development through peer learning, and to document stories of how regional teams can improve links between the demand side and supply side of regional systems.

The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), established in 2001 as a collaboration of 20 federal agencies and cabinet-level departments with an interest in nanotechnology R&D and commercialization, has released a draft of its 2016 strategic plan. The National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan, which describes the initiative’s vision and goals as well as potential strategies to achieve these goals. The plan is an update to and a replacement of a plan originally released in December 2013. Prior to the new plan’s official publication, the public is encouraged to submit comments online by September 23, 2016.

To improve private sector partnerships and increase commercialization efforts, the national labs should consider establishing external nonprofit entities to manage their commercialization efforts, according to a new report from Innovation Associates Inc. Supported by Argonne National Laboratory, the report – Enhancing National Laboratory Partnership and Commercialization Opportunities – highlights elements of several models that the author contends will improve U.S. economic prosperity by increasing the effectiveness of technology transfer and commercialization of technologies developed by the national laboratories as well as developing vital industry partnerships.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced over $40 million in available federal funding for a new DHS Center of Excellence (COE) for Homeland Security Quantitative Analysis via two federal funding opportunities (FFO). DHS will commit up to $40 million to an institution of higher education to act as the lead center for a network of COEs. In addition, DHS also is accepting applications for potential partners to work with the lead institution in support of the center’s activities. The proposed COEs will conduct end user-focused research to enhance the application of analytic tools that support real-time decision making and address homeland security-related threats and hazards. The deadline for submitting proposals is November 1.

Over the last month, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced over $8 million in grants to expand entrepreneurial and business support services in Alabama, New York, and Texas including:

Researchers of American entrepreneurship now have a timelier socio-economic portrait of the nation’s employer-owned businesses as a result of a public-private partnership between the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency, and the Kauffman Foundation. Last week, data from the first Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs were made publicly available, which provides a detailed picture of the American entrepreneur in 2014 by examining race, ethnicity, gender, and geography. A brief released by the Census Bureau notes that more than 480,000 firms with paid employees (roughly 8.9 percent) of the 5.4 million U.S. firms with paid employees in 2014 had been in business for less than two years, according to the recent Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs data.

Immigrant entrepreneurs would be allowed to remain in the United States for an initial period of up to two years, and, conditional upon meeting certain benchmarks, could potentially stay in the country for one additional period of up to three years under a newly proposed rule by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As part of the International Entrepreneur Rule, which is now open for a 45-day comment period, certain international entrepreneurs would have an opportunity to start or scale their businesses in the United States. In an official blog post by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation Tom Kalil and Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship Doug Rand, the authors note that the new reform would propose clear criteria to identify those entrepreneurs with the potential to provide significant public benefit to the United States. Evaluating entrepreneurs on a case-by-case basis, the proposed rule would consider factors such as: the entrepreneur’s ownership stake (at least 15 percent) and leadership role in the startup; the growth potential of the startup; competitive research grants of at least $100,000 from federal, state, and local government agencies provided to the firm; and the investment of at least $345,000 by qualified American investors.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), and its federal partners, announced the winners of its third annual Growth Accelerator Fund Competition on August 31. The 68 winners in 32 states and the District of Columbia were judged by more than 100 experts from both the public and private sector with entrepreneurial, investment, startup, economic development, capital formation and academic backgrounds. The competition consisted of two panel reviews, the first involving over 400 applications and presentations to establish a pool of 200 qualified finalists. Of those 200 finalists, a second panel evaluated presentations and pitch videos before selecting the final 68 winning organizations. Each winner will receive a cash prize of $50,000 from the fund’s $3.4 million to boost the economic impact of accelerators across the country.

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that 43 small businesses had been selected to participate in the second round of its Small Business Voucher (SBV) pilot project, and was collectively awarded more than $8 million for a wide range of R&D clean energy, public-private sector innovation activities. The winning businesses will have the opportunity to collaborate with 12 DOE labs, as well as access to world class facilities and expert advice from renowned scientists and engineers to bring their clean energy technologies to market. The DOE laboratories scheduled to work with the awardees will offer their support and resources to commercialize clean energy techs involving advanced manufacturing, bioenergy, buildings, fuel cells, geothermal, solar, vehicles and water. Nearly $15 million in SBVs have been awarded in Rounds 1 and 2. The first SBV pilot took place in the fall of 2015 and involved 33 small businesses. Information involving Round 3 of the SBV program is expected to be released in October.

The Economic Development Administration (EDA), the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), and the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) have announced $38.8 million in funding as a part of the Obama administration’s Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) Initiative – a coordinated federal effort to align, leverage and target a range of federal economic and workforce development programs and resources to assist communities negatively impacted by global transition away from coal. In addition to $38.8 million in federal support, the federal partners anticipate that POWER investments will help coal-impacted communities leverage an additional $67 million from other public and private partners.

Opportunities for successful workforce development partnerships exist across a variety of industries and geographies, according to a recently released report from the Community Development Department at the Cleveland Fed. The report, Addressing Employment Needs through Sector Partnerships, includes five case studies from throughout the Federal Reserve’s Fourth District, which contains Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Kentucky, the panhandle of West Virginia and all of Ohio. Although sector-based initiatives have been around for quite some time, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, whose final regulations became publicly available in June 2016, places a strong emphasis on aligning education and job training with employer needs, according to the report’s authors Kyle Fee, Matt Klesta, and Lisa Nelson.

Startup activity in the United States has increased for the second straight year after declining throughout the Great Recession and the years that followed, according to a newly updated index from the Kauffman Foundation. The metropolitan areas with the highest levels in 2016 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity are Austin, Miami, and Los Angeles. Among large states, the most startup activity according to the 2016 index were in Texas, Florida, and California, while Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming had the highest levels among smaller states.

The 2016 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity is comprised of three equally weighted proxies: