SSTI Digest

Last week the White House hosted a Google Hangout on the American Maker Movement and highlighted some dynamic programs that are turning the Maker Movement into a legitimate economic development tool for regions across the country.

Event speakers highlighted the rapidly shifting industrial climate in the U.S. as a main driver of the Maker Movement. Low-cost energy, low-cost data storage, and an increasingly skilled workforce are supporting the explosive growth of industrial artisan entrepreneurship. Cities across the country are moving to provide the cooperative workspace Makers need to develop, test, and scale their businesses.

Public institutions also are being transformed into Makers Spaces. The Pittsburgh Kids Museum serves as a national model for public support of Makers programs, providing public space and outreach events at local libraries for Makers programming.

Providing students with industry-relevant education and skills is the idea behind the Youth CareerConnect grant program, which will provide $100 million to implement curriculum for high schools to strengthen the talent pipeline. In partnership with the Department of Education, the Department of Labor will award 25-40 grants for individual or multistate projects using revenues from the H-1B visa program. The goals are to integrate both career and academic learning, provide work-based learning opportunities, better engage employers, and elevate industry training. Grantees must demonstrate a strong public-private partnership, which includes a local education agency, a workforce investment system entity, an employer, and an institution of higher education. Read the announcement: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ETA20132231.htm.

This week, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a wide-ranging roundup of new and ongoing efforts to leverage availability of large, accessible data sets to spur innovation. While many of these efforts were focused on supporting research on the potential of big data, several agency efforts are using the model of open data app competitions to fuel private-sector business creation. One of these efforts, the Department of Energy's American Energy Data Challenge, is capitalizing on successful experiments in big data competitions done at the regional and state level.

The OSTP report, released in conjunction with a "Data to Knowledge to Action" event this week details the investments made in large data set efforts since the White House kicked off its $200 million big data initiative last year. These include ongoing research projects at the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DOE, NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Institutes of Health.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has made a series of announcements over the past few weeks aimed at improving the high-tech skill set of the state's workers and students. A new STEM strategic plan released yesterday would refine Massachusetts' efforts to expand the pipeline of young, skilled science and technology workers and improve the quality of STEM education. The plan is an update of goals originally set by the governor in 2010, and is focused on increasing the percentage of highly-skilled Pre-K-16 STEM teachers and growing the share of students who enter post-secondary STEM programs. Read the announcement...

Fresh off a nationwide listening tour and against the backdrop of 1776, a global hub for startups in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker unveiled the department's strategic vision and priorities focused on three key areas: trade, innovation and data. Pritzker said her department will make sure businesses have a strong voice when it comes to strengthening the digital economy by working to protect intellectual property, ensuring robust cybersecurity infrastructure and championing free and open Internet. In the coming months, Commerce will develop a coordinated approach to those policies that affect businesses.

Follow-on funding, access to technology, talent and resources all can be barriers to commercialization and successfully spinning off sustainable companies. Always seeking a quicker, more viable path to market for technologies and products, university-based programs and public-private partnerships try to tackle these hurdles, which often times are region-specific. Such is the case in Long Island, NY, where a recent partnership between a nonprofit organization and venture capital firm is working to address access to capital concerns. Other recent initiatives addressing region-specific barriers have launched in Indiana and Wisconsin.

Save the date!
Hosted by the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, SSTI's 18th Annual Conference will be held in Chicago at the Westin Chicago River North Hotel on September 14-16, 2014.

Chicago provides an excellent backdrop for SSTI's 18th Annual Conference. Illinois has a vibrant technology community that is using innovative approaches to bring together state and local partnerships to positively impact the economy.

Keeping with years past, the agenda will be set by SSTI member recommendations to ensure the conference will be packed with the most timely and relevant sessions. Look for more information on SSTI's conference website at: http://ssticonference.org/. Sponsorship opportunities are available; contact Noelle Sheets at sheets@ssti.org for more information.

People often remember stories, and telling stories can be an effective way to communicate success. But, as researchers have found, there is a craft to organizational storytelling whereby the story must work in conjunction with both logical-rational elements and the emotive and motivational features of the people involved. This lesson is an important one for small businesses and startups seeking to gain traction and staying power with their audience or customer. It also resonates for TBED practitioners who often struggle with clear and concise messaging in promoting economic growth. Researchers at the University of Michigan (UM) Ross School of Business examined storytelling's role in entrepreneurial endeavors as part of a working paper released in September. The paper concludes with a set of take-aways for researchers, small business owners and entrepreneurs, including tactics for telling better stories.

State government agencies spent $1.4 billion on research in FY11, an 11.3 percent increase over the previous year, according to a release from the National Science Foundation. Much of the increase was concentrated in the top five states, New York, Ohio, Florida, California and Pennsylvania, which together represent about 51 percent of total U.S. state R&D spending. State R&D expenditures appear to be focused on a few key industry sectors, with California and Ohio devoting the bulk of their investment in energy research and New York, Florida and Pennsylvania investing in health-related projects. The report offers a breakdown of R&D expenditures by state and expenditures by sector for the top ten states. Read the InfoBrief...

A new statewide network will coordinate the regional economic development activities of Indiana University, according to an announcement released by the university this week. The Innovate Indiana Network will complement the work done by the Innovate Indiana initiative and the university's Council for Regional Engagement and Economic Development (CREED). The network will include representatives from 16 schools, offices and centers across the state that offer services that could potentially benefit regional economies. By connecting these offices through the network, the university hopes to address a wider variety of economic concerns in the state and marshal resources from underutilized university offices. Read the announcement...

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Commerce highlights university programs across the country working to facilitate student and faculty entrepreneurship as part of a larger federal effort to improve tech transfer activities and external partnerships. Information was collected from the leaders of 131 research universities to understand what universities are doing programmatically and strategically to nurture innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship. Examples range from universities experimenting with on-campus accelerators, entrepreneurial dorms and student venture funds to tech transfer offices that focus on identifying and supporting entrepreneurship on campus. Universities also are increasingly partnering with companies to offer internships and shared facilities. Read the report...

Growth in the number of patent assertions facing startup companies is hampering U.S. venture capital, according to a new survey of venture capitalists (VC) and venture-backed companies from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Robin Feldman, director of the Institute for Innovation Law at University of California Hastings. Eighty percent of VC respondents note that the number of patent assertions filed against portfolio companies have increased over the past five years, with half indicating these assertions were a major deterrent to investment. Seventy percent believe the growth in claims is a negative influence on U.S. entrepreneurship.