SSTI Digest

The White House Rural Council has launched a $10 billion rural economic development fund. This launch was announced last Thursday at the Rural Opportunity Investment Conference held in Washington D.C. CoBank, a Denver-based national cooperative bank, serves as the anchor investor of the fund that will be managed by Capitol Peak Asset Management. Capitol will also recruit additional institutional investors to the fund including pension funds, endowments, and foundations that are interested in investing in rural areas.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other agencies will assist in the identification of rural projects in need of funding. They are taking particular interest in investing in rural healthcare facilities, educational facilities, water and wastewater systems, energy projects, broadband expansion efforts, and local and regional food systems. These projects can be funded wholly by private sector dollars or can be the result of public-private partnerships.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released its latest broadband report. The report provides summarized data on Internet access connections in the U.S. (over 200 kilobits per second in at least one direction). Key findings include the number of broadband connections with downstream speeds of at least 10 Mbps increased by 118% in the U.S. between June 2012 and June 2013. Users also may access the data sets presented in the report via tables and maps hosted on the FCC website.

President Barack Obama signed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) into law on July 22 – a federal-wide reform effort designed to help job seekers access employment, education, training, and support services to succeed in the labor market and to match employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy. WIOA is the first legislative reform in 15 years of the public workforce system. It will take effect July 1, 2015 – key implementation dates for Department of Labor. It supersedes the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 and amends the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, the Wagner-Peyser Act, and the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998. Highlights of the new act:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. launched Small Business Forward℠ — a five-year, $30 million grant program to help industry cluster initiatives in cities across the country.  Through Small Business Forward, JPMorgan Chase will fund nonprofit organizations that work with small businesses concentrated in a single industry sector. In addition to supporting strategic planning and research, grants will help cluster organizations provide participating small businesses with access to networking opportunities; partnerships with colleges and universities; workforce and management training efforts; supplier networks; and, export promotion initiatives. Awardees include:

Anchored by the largest ever investment since the MoneyTree Report began covering venture capital investment in 1995, the $13 billion total dollars invested in the second quarter of 2014 marks the largest total quarterly investment since $13.1 billion was invested in the first quarter of 2001, according to new data from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) MoneyTree survey. Likewise, the $22.7 billion invested in the first half of 2014 is the highest first half total since 2001.

Between Q1 and Q2 of 2014, investment activity rose 34 percent in dollar terms and 13 percent in number of deals. First half investments in 2014 were 71 percent greater in dollars and 9 percent greater in number of deals than the first half of 2013.

Several scholarly articles published within the past few months highlight the role that entrepreneurship, high-tech employment, and place play in both economic growth and economic development. In a landscape where seemingly every place desires the successes found in the Silicon Valley model, new frameworks that support the economic efficacy of human capital, entrepreneurship, and place are needed to encourage innovation and prosperity.

As the world becomes more globally connected, both public and private entities have turned their attention to foreign markets in the hopes of spurring innovation, capital creation, and economic prosperity. Whether their effort is developing international business partnerships, attempting to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), investing in startups, or taking advantage of international demand, the entities establishing these initiatives view long-term economic success for both firms and regions as dependent upon entering the global market place. Initiatives in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island are examples of public sector efforts that are looking for opportunities abroad to support economic growth.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the creation of the Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium, a 100-member public-private partnership between public research universities, private sector companies, and other research partners to develop next generation of materials and processes used in the manufacturing of wide band gap semiconductors. According to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, the state will commit up to $135 million to help establish the new consortium and private sector partners will commit the remaining $365 million over five years. The partnership also is supported by the START-UP NY tax free initiative.

As Congress continues negotiations over the FY15 federal budget, SSTI is hard at work trying to secure additional funding for the Regional Innovation program. The Regional Innovation Program was authorized under the American COMPETES Act and is designed to provide funding to support regional innovation activities. The Senate has approved $20 million for the program for FY2015, while the House did not provide any funding for the program. SSTI has prepared a support letter to Congressional leaders and is seeking organizations to sign on to the letter. The more organizations that sign will increase our chances to secure funding. The deadline for signatures to this letter is Thursday, July 31.

To add your organization to the list, please email Caroline Wagner at cwagner at sheridangroupdc dot com. The letter follows:

Over the next three years, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) plans to hold open competitions for MEP center cooperative agreements in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The process will begin with a demonstration program this summer, in which competitions will be held in six to 10 states in each of MEP’s six regions. MEP notes that the recompetition is being undertaken to comply with guidelines calling for new competitions at least every 10 years, and will allow MEP to reduce the variation in funding levels across the country.

Though MEP plans to hold new competitions in every state, no list or timeline of competitions has been released.  Current MEP center operators will be eligible to reapply for cooperative agreements, but the competition will be open to other applicants as well. NIST’s associate director of Innovation and Industry Services will be responsible for the selection process.

About 74 percent of U.S. residents with a bachelor’s degree in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields are not employed in STEM occupations, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. While STEM graduates are less likely to be unemployed, they generally find careers outside of science and technology. As detailed in a recent SSTI Digest article, many employers are having difficulty filling STEM positions, with the average STEM job posting lasting twice as long as other jobs before being filled. An update to the ongoing Pathways to Prosperity project describes some successful efforts around the country in improving the pipeline of students headed into STEM jobs.

In addition to the recent announcement of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Incubator program, several other countries announced initiatives that will provide financial and other resources to support innovation incubator and accelerator programs that help cultivate new tech startups and increase economic growth. Nations that made recent announcements include Canada, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.