SSTI Digest

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced a new round of competition for the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia (AMTech) program — a competition that will award two-year planning grants to establish new and strengthen existing industry-driven consortia to solve high-priority technology challenges and accelerate the growth of advanced manufacturing in the United States. NIST anticipates awarding a total of $5.6 million to support multiple awards of up to $500,000 each. Program eligibility is restricted to U.S. states, local governments, institutions of higher education and nonprofit organizations. Applications are due October 31. For more information about the AMTech announcement, NIST will host webinars on August 7 and 14, beginning at 2pm EDT. Read the announcement…

In 2011, U.S.-located companies spent $29.6 billion for extramural (purchased and collaborative) research and development performed by mostly domestic organizations, according to a National Science Foundation (NSF) InfoBrief. Approximately $24 billion in R&D spending was purchased R&D. The additional $5.6 billion was payments to R&D collaborators. Extramural R&D exceeds 10 percent of all R&D expenditures by businesses in 2011, up from an estimated 4 percent in 19991. NSF researchers credit the growth in relative size of domestic extramural R&D by industry to differing rates of growth in total R&D spending among industries and of changes in the importance of external partners within industries. The findings were taken from NSF’s Business R&D and Innovation Survey. Read the brief…

As the Great Recession wanes, an increasing amount of research has been conducted to assess its impact on entrepreneurship in the United States. Authors with the Kauffman Foundation found that firm formation in the United States is remarkably constant over time, although the death rate of companies rises during recessions. Others found that despite the Great Recession causing many businesses to close their doors, the rapid rise of unemployment also drove an increase in entrepreneurs. Still, others argue that increased entrepreneurial activity was found to be related to unemployment only in those states that had already established strong levels of entrepreneurship prior to the recession. The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that since the Great Recession began in December 2007, establishment births have experienced the steepest decline since the Business Employment Dynamics (BDM) data series began in March 1994. This Digest article examines establishments that were “born” in March 2007, the earliest data-point before the onset of the recession, and their likelihood of surviving until March 2013. By using a six-year survival rate instead of the more common…

In an increasingly globalized marketplace, the ability to penetrate the ultra-valuable U.S. market is still an end goal for companies throughout the world. Since the early 2000s, foreign governments have opened accelerators as one mechanism to provide funding, mentorship, and additional support for young firms hoping to enter the U.S. market. Although many of these accelerators feature common characteristics, each has its own strategy for best reaching the needs of its young and promising companies. Perhaps no country has been more active than Canada in the establishment of accelerators. Currently there are Canadian Technology Accelerators (CTAs) for Canadian tech startups in New York, Silicon Valley, and Boston, as well as for health IT companies in Philadelphia, life sciences firms in San Francisco, and cleantech companies in Denver. The goal of each of these accelerators, which are managed by the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, is to help Canadian companies enter the U.S. market by making office space freely available, helping in the refinement of business models, collecting competitive intelligence, and helping in the pursuit of clients, partners, and additional…

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. Tom Vilsach, secretary of Agriculture and chair of the Rural Council, said, “This fund represents a new approach to our support for job-creating projects across the country.” He…

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. The FCC also released a web-based tool that allows users to interact with the broadband data by changing geography, managing metrics, and ranking their state/region on select broadband characteristics. The report, data tables, maps and interactive tool includes data collected by the FCC through June 30, 2013. Access the report…

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: States will be required to strategically align workforce development programs to ensure that employment and training services provided by the core programs are coordinated and complementary so that job seekers acquire skills and credentials that meet employers’ needs. The alignment of workforce development programs with regional economic development strategies to meet the needs of local and regional employers. The bill will consolidate several…

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: Manufacturing Renaissance’s Austin Manufacturing Innovation Park is developing a facility for advanced manufacturing companies on Chicago's West Side. Eastern Market's new community kitchen gives small business owners access to professional kitchens and connections and Bizdom for strengthening the environment for e-commerce businesses in Detroit. The University of Missouri-Kansas City's Free Enterprise Center will provide growing businesses access to high-tech equipment including 3D printing to…

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. The $6.1 billion invested in the software industry in the second quarter marks just the fourth time since 1995 that dollars invested in the industry eclipsed $6 billion in a single quarter. Five of the largest 10 deals of the quarter occurred within this industry, led by the $1.2 billion deal from a consortium of investors for Uber, a transportation-software firm. Uber, whose smartphone app allows…

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. Recent research in the latest issue of Economic Development Quarterly explores the influence that entrepreneurship and the concentration of high-technology jobs had on employment growth in the 114 largest U.S. metropolitan areas (MSAs) over the last full business cycle, the years between 1991 and 2007. In the article, the authors Ross Gittell, Jeffrey Sohl, and Edinaldo Tebaldi find that entrepreneurship had a robust positive influence on employment growth during all stages of the business cycle. The authors also find evidence that growth in high-technology concentration, rather than a high concentration of high-tech employment, spurred employment growth. Research that highlights the nexus of entrepreneurship and technological…

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. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick recently announced the launch of the Universal Partnerships (UP) Program, a new state program to provide grants for the formation of R&D collaborations between Massachusetts companies and international life sciences organizations. Administered by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC), grants of up to $200,000 will be made to Massachusetts companies so they can engage in partnerships with foreign companies,…

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. Housed at the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany, the site will act as a global “open-innovation” user-shared facility that provides partners with access to cutting-edge equipment and provide a collaborative research environment. Partners will focus their research on silicon carbide and other technologies that have the potential to enable devices to get smaller, faster and more efficient than silicon semiconductors. The partnership will be led by General Electric (GE), which promised to invest $100 million over…