SSTI Digest

Only 17 companies had initial public offerings (IPOs) in the first quarter of 2015, the lowest number since the beginning of 2013, according to data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). This is a significant drop from the 37 IPO exits in the first quarter of 2014. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) were also down, with 86 exits, compared to 115 in Q1 2014. While 2014 was an unusually active time for venture-backed exits, the current data appears to be a return to recession-era levels of deals and disclosed values.

In their release, NVCA noted that a large number of venture-backed companies already have publicly filed for IPOs and there is no reason for concern yet about the future health of the venture market. However, the lull in activity could indicate that the burst of exits in all four quarters of 2014 was an anomaly.

Companies in the biotechnology and medical sectors dominated IPO activity. Of the 17 companies that achieve IPOs, 13 were in these sectors.

Working groups at The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and The Association of American Universities (AAU), two membership organizations of higher education institutions, have released statements on the role of universities in managing intellectual property and technology transfer alongside their core missions and interest in maximizing public benefit. The two sets of recommendations differ slightly, yet both groups emphasize the importance of clearly defining and communicating the principles that guide their work and ensuring that discoveries made on their campuses can be developed for the benefit of the consumer.

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted final rules to update and expand Regulation A, an existing exemption from registration for smaller issuers of securities.  The new Regulation A+ will enable smaller companies to offer and sell up to $50 million of securities in a 12-month period, subject to eligibility, disclosure and reporting requirements. Under Regulation A+, there are two tiers of offerings that companies may make that include:

• Tier 1 – for offerings of securities of up to $20 million in a 12-month period with no more than $6 million in offers by selling security-holders that are affiliates of the issuer; and,
• Tier 2 – for offerings of securities of up to $50 million in a 12-month period with no more than $15 million in offers by selling security-holders that are affiliates of the issuer.

Both tiers are subject to certain basic securities requirements while tier 2 offerings are also subject to additional disclosure and ongoing reporting requirements.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced the first 26 recipients of the 2014 Regional Innovation Strategies program grants. Managed by the Economic Development Administration, the Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program is designed to advance innovation and capacity-building activities in regions across the country through three different types of grants:

• i6 Challenge grants;
• Cluster Grants for Seed Capital Funds; and,
• Science and Research Park Development Grants (read more in the Sept 4, 2014 issue of the Digest).

Sec. Pritzker announced $10 million in total funding will be made to the 17 i6 Challenge grant awardees and nine organizations for Cluster Grants for Seed Capital Funds. The winners of the third component of RIS – Science and Research Park Development Grants – will be announced in the coming weeks. Read the announcement…

Because of recent changes in the methodologies used by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), research and development is now recognized as investment in statistics on U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).  As a result, from 1929 to 2012, the average annual growth rate of GDP is 0.1 percentage point higher than in the previously published estimates. This revised GDP quantity slightly decreases the R&D-to-GDP ratio often times used as a proxy for a nation’s R&D intensity, according to a fact sheet by researchers at the National Science Foundation.

For many years, the BEA treated private sector research and development expenses (R&D) as an intermediate cost of production and removed these expenses when they calculated the value-adding activities that define GDP. At the same time, government R&D expenditures were included in the consumption expenditures component of GDP, but not separately identified.  The new BEA treatment, which considers R&D as investment in all sectors of the economy, estimates the value of R&D, not its current costs.  

Europe is catching up to the United States in areas such as idea creation and risk capital but lacks the means to retain its talent, according to a recent report from authors at the Imperial College Business School in London. In ICT innovation in Europe: Productivity gains, startup growth and retention,  the authors note that the fragmentation of the European digital market and the scarcity of skills and venture capital create growth constraints for the region’s smaller firms and negatively impact Europe’s ability to retain high-growth ICT firms.  

Over the past few months, SSTI has followed proposals issued by governors in their budget requests, State of the State Addresses, Inaugural Speeches and other events. Now that many state legislatures have begun approving budgets, the Digest will check on the status of these proposals, and examine the state of technology-based economic development funding in the states. This week, we review actions in Arkansas, Mississippi and New York.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has release a solicitation (NSF 15-562) seeking public and private partners for four new Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs. The hubs would build on the Obama administration's National Big Data Research and Development Initiative by creating a nationwide network of local stakeholders invested in overcoming technology barriers to large-scale data processing and interpretation. NSF plans to locate the four centers in different regions of the U.S., split between the Northeast, Midwest, South and West. Proposals are due June 24, 2015. Learn more...

Earlier this year, the University of Washington (UW) relaunched its technology commercialization office as CoMotion, an entrepreneurial hub and makerspace. In doing so, UW joined a growing number of universities that have opened up their technology transfer operations to approaches inspired by the tech startup scene. The transformations of the University of Pennsylvania, Wake Forest, Tufts University and UCLA recently were profiled in Nature Biotechnology. Author Brady Huggett attributes the rise of research/entrepreneurship/makerspaces to the decline in federal support for research and the resulting need for strategies focused on the private sector. A survey by the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition found that the rise in non-tech transfer university entrepreneur support programs has led to a rapid increase in startup activity.

Over the past few months, SSTI has followed proposals issued by governors in their budget requests, State of the State Addresses, Inaugural Speeches and other events. Now that many state legislatures have begun approving budgets, the Digest will check on the status of these proposals, and examine the state of technology-based economic development funding in the states. This week, we review budgets in Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming

President Obama announced over $240M in new multi-sector commitments dedicated to STEM education and outreach, with an emphasis on underserved groups, at the 2015 White House Science Fair on Monday. With the new investments, the president’s “Education to Innovate” campaign, launched in November 2009, has now resulted in more than $1 billion in financial and in-kind support for STEM initiatives. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a framework to increase public access to scientific publications and digital scientific data funded by NSF grants. The plan, entitled Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries, will require that NSF-funded research presented in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and papers in juried conference proceedings or transactions be deposited in a database within one year of publication for the public to download, read, and analyze. The author(s) also must make the meta-data available for download.  Read the announcement and plan…