SSTI Digest

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… This is the first year funding is available through the program, which has been SSTI’s top D.C. legislative priority for the last three years.

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.   Estimates of R&D investment have two components: own-account R&D, which…

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.   While conversations about European brain drain can cover a wide range of topics from academic insight into Great Britain’s emigrants to the broader ramifications of a European diaspora, generally speaking, Europeans are much more geographically rooted than Americans, writes UC-Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti for the Wall Street Journal.  Because of the uncertainty involved, demographic decline causes European communities to worry and obsess, just as it does nearly all communities. Typically, however, brain drain conversations involve the migration of individuals with potential, not full-…

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. ArkansasGov. Asa Hutchinson signed off on $8.5 million in FY16 funding for the operation of the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority (ASTA) (SB 31). Beyond operations, $1.9 million was appropriated for ASTA's seed capital investments and another $18.7 million was allotted for the Arkansas Acceleration Fund. Up to $5 million of the Acceleration Fund dollars will be available for use by Innovation Arkansas. The Acceleration Fund received another $30 million through a separate operations budget (SB 111) for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. ASTA's MEP office, Arkansas Manufacturing Solutions, will receive $2.6 million, including $941,110 in federal funds, $257,182 in state funds and $1.5 million from the…

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. The UW CoMotion announcement came in January 2015 when the university decided to rebrand and relaunch its Center for Commercialization to play a more integral role in the regional and global innovation economy. UW's first vice provost of innovation, Vikram Jandhyala, said that the change was reflective of the university's desire to…

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 ArizonaArizona legislators approved many of Gov. Doug Ducey's proposals to dramatically reduce higher education spending. The governor's budget recommended ending all funding for three of the state's community colleges. Under the approved bill, community colleges in Maricopa and Pima will lose all state support, though the Pinal County Community College system would receive about $2 million, according to an article in The Arizona Republic. However, STEM and workforce programs at state-funded community colleges will receive about $5 million. Legislators approved even larger reductions for the state's higher education system than the governor proposed. Gov. Ducey proposed a $75…

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.  This year’s science fair focused specifically on diversity, especially the engagement of women and girls in science. In addition to the president’s remarks to students, science educators, and business leaders in attendance, notable commitments announced at the fifth White House Science Fair, according to a White House fact sheet, include: $150 million for a philanthropic effort  led by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Simons Foundation for a new Faculty Scholars Program that provides grants and resources to early-career scientists; $90 million for the “Let Everyone Dream” campaign, to expand STEM opportunities to under-represented youth through…

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…

Over the last couple months, the San Francisco-based Uber, a mobile-app-based transportation network, announced partnerships with institutions of higher education in the Northeast. In February, Uber and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) launched a strategic partnership that includes the launch of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center, a Pittsburgh-based research laboratory to advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe, reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere. The center will focus on the areas of mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology. The agreement also will include funding from Uber for faculty chairs and graduate fellowships at CMU. In March, Uber made an investment of $25,000 in the Startup Shell, a student-run coworking space and incubator at the University of Maryland.  Through this partnership, Uber will award investor grants to student-created startups over the next two years and will engage students through a variety of unique business competitions with a specific focus on developing next-generation transportation solutions.

In the recently released 50 State Project, CQ Roll Call provides an overview of the 45,564 bills and resolutions that were passed by state legislatures between the 2013 and 2014 legislative sessions. The report found the top issues covered by state legislatures during the timeframe were state budgets, education (including STEM and higher education), taxes, and transportation. Other important issues included job creation and energy-related issues. Job creation and economic revitalization were among the five most important legislative issues in nine states including Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Kentucky, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania,  and West Virginia. The study used survey data collected from reporters who cover state politics for each of the 50 states. Download the report…

Late last week, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo’s released her proposed $8.6 billion FY2016 budget proposal.   The budget focuses on three guiding principles: building skills, attracting entrepreneurs and investment, and fostering innovation. Raimondo, who had previously served as the state’s treasurer and founded Rhode Island’s first venture capital fund, prioritized economic development and released a detailed jobs plan during her election campaign, much of which is reflected in the budget. With the goal of building skills, Raimondo’s budget proposes: A $35.5 million increase in K-12 education; Establishes a loan forgiveness program for graduates that stay in Rhode Island and work in priority fields; Aligns job training with industry needs; Restructures existing higher education grant programs to create a last-dollar scholarship program for Rhode Island students; and, Invests in Prepare RI, a dual enrollment program that makes earning degrees or industry certification more affordable and attainable. The proposed budget also would eliminate 27 licensing requirements and other regulatory burdens and fees, such as a commercial sales tax…