SSTI Digest

Startup Colorado recently announced the launch of a new $200,000 fund to support events that strengthen the entrepreneurial communities across Colorado. The organization will issue grants to Colorado organizations planning events, seminars and contests that bring together startup communities, particularly those in the Denver-Boulder region, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, according to the Denver Business Journal. Project applications must be focused on driving entrepreneurship and innovation with the intent of becoming sustainable. Initial financial support for the fund has come from several prominent Colorado entrepreneurs, and a partnership with the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado intends to sustain the program through future contributions. Read more about the fund...

With additional funding directed to higher education as part of the FY14 budget, the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) systems announced efforts to boost access to online courses for current full-time students this fall. The goal is to overcome space shortages in classrooms and help graduate more students on time. Meanwhile, a bill that would require the state’s colleges and universities to grant credit for online courses taken through for-profit groups, including providers of massive open online courses (MOOCs), is considered dead in the legislature for now. The bill’s main backer, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said he is waiting to see the results of the new online efforts by the state’s public higher education systems before moving forward, reports Inside Higher Ed. The FY14 budget establishes the first-year investment in a multi-year, stable funding plan for the CSU and UC systems. Each system will receive a 5 percent increase of $125 million – the first stage of a four-year funding schedule that will result in a 20 percent general fund increase for the systems, according to Gov.…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched a new initiative to fund the exploration of using Big Data to improve national health care outcomes. NIH will provide $24 million per year for four years to establish six to eight Big Data Centers of Excellence. The centers will be used by researchers and students for training in data science and testing the use of large and complex datasets to create tools, methods, and software that can improve health care processes. Big Data has strong potential to revolutionize the health care industry, not just through the development of new processes and products, but also by establishing new standards for health care policy development and implementation. Global health expert Joel Selanikio recently discussed this issue in a TEDx talk. But while Big Data might have the potential for solving structural challenges in the health care system, the U.S. scientific community is ill-equipped to take advantage of the opportunity. NIH cites a growing resource and skills gap between biomedical researchers and the new forms of data collection and integration that are reshaping the health care field as the reason for funding the…

New business creation in the U.S. increased in 2011 for the first time since the 2007-09 economic crisis, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Census data indicates that 8.2 percent of all businesses were less than one year old in 2011, the first increase since 2006 and the largest increase in a decade. A pair of briefs from the Census Bureau and the Kauffman Foundation link the decline and rebound of American startups to fluctuations in housing prices during the economic downturn. They also suggest that the increase in firm creation has been well-distributed throughout the country. The Census data reveals that just over 409,000 new firms were less than a year old when the data was collected in 2011. The Business Dynamics Statistics data separates the number of firms from the number of establishments, which represent single locations of businesses. New businesses represented about 8.2 percent of the almost 5 million total U.S. firms that year. In the previous year, new firms were about 7.8 percent of total firms following four years of decline. Though encouraging, the 2011 percentage of new businesses remains well below the 2006 peak of 10.8 percent.…

As federal immigration reform remains in gridlock, cities are leading a charge to make America more welcoming to immigrants. Driven by the potential economic growth, mayors and regional economic development organizations are moving ahead with the creation of new initiatives and entities to attract and retain high-skilled immigrants. For mid-sized, and even larger cities, high-skilled immigrants are viewed as untapped, potential tech entrepreneurs who in the past have been drawn to Silicon Valley and other tech hubs. At the forefront of this movement are cities that previously encompassed the Rust Belt of America. In June, representatives from several former Rust Belt cities met in Detroit at the first annual Global Great Lakes Network conference to share best practices among immigrant economic development initiatives across the Midwest and beyond. The recently established network of cities — Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Dayton, Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Lansing — is intended to enhance regional efforts to attract, welcome and retain immigrants, new Americans and other newcomers. According to a 2012 report from the Brookings Institution…

As the U.S. manufacturing sector continues to grow, so does the challenge for regions to find “middle-skill” workers who can fill job vacancies in advanced manufacturing. The Council on Foreign Relations has released a new report, Building the American Workforce, that suggests policymakers can fill this need by narrowing the skills gap for underserved, low-skilled workers. To meet this need, the report's recommendations include overhauling the national workforce development system and establishing a broad vision for workforce training that focuses on low-skilled, underserved workers. Examples include advanced manufacturing training programs in New Hampshire and Washington to demonstrate how the vision can be operationalized at the regional level. The report notes that even before the Great Recession, an “alarming number of Americans lacked the skills and education credentials needed to compete for decent-paying jobs in an economy transformed by globalization and accelerating technological change.” Beyond addressing growing national income disparities and reclaiming losses in middle-income jobs, addressing the skills gap by improving workforce…

Yesterday, the White House honored 11 “Champions of Change” who are working to promote an inclusive technology-based economy. The honorees ranged from nonprofit leaders to a mathematics professor to the author of a children’s book. Eight of the 11 “champions” focused on introducing young students to programming and technology, reflecting the significant emphasis on the long-term investment in future workers, especially those who are underrepresented and underserved. These honorees reflect efforts by nonprofits and citizens, but are only one aspect of a growing movement in the public and private sector to create a more inclusive economy now and in the future. The “Champions of Change: Tech Inclusion” event was part of the White House Tech Inclusion Initiative that promotes science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) as an investment in the future of the U.S. economy. The initiative centers on the president’s goal of broadening STEM education and producing one million STEM graduates in the next decade. One of the honorees at the event concisely captured the notion driving the White House Tech Inclusion Initiative when…

In the second quarter (Q2) of 2013, venture investment totaled $6.7 billion over 913 deals, according to the quarterly survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Compared to the first quarter of 2013, the amount of venture capital investment increased 12 percent and the number of deals increased 2 percent. Although still well below venture capital investment highs in 2007, Q2 2013 had the largest total amount of investment in a year. In total, $12.6 billion in venture investments has been made in the first half of 2013 in 1,776 deals. This represents a 3.8 percent decrease in the investment amount compared to the first half of 2012, but a slight uptick, 4 percent, in the number of deals completed. The software and biotechnology sectors were the largest two recipients of venture capital investments. The software industry received $2.1 billion in investments, although this was a 7 percent drop from the previous quarter. Biotechnology rose 41 percent in investments to $1.3 billion in 103 deals. Other sectors receiving large totals of investments were IT ($654 million) and medical devices ($543 million). Clean…

Lawmakers continued to provide support for life sciences at a reduced level in the recently enacted budget; however, other technology areas did not fare as well. In some cases, funding was eliminated for tech-based initiatives, and lawmakers allowed a tax credit for early stage investors to expire. Meanwhile, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center plans to consolidate activities and redouble efforts to keep things moving in the wake of a 27 percent reduction to their budget. Established nearly 30 years ago, the NC Biotechnology Center serves as a statewide hub for life-science commercialization with activities including funding faculty recruitment and research with commercial potential. The 2013-15 biennial budget provides $12.6 million each fiscal year for the center, which is $4.6 million less per year than last biennium. Of this amount, $8.2 million each year is for science and commercialization activities. In a recent news article, Norris Tolson, President and CEO of the NC Biotechnology Center, said his group will work to consolidate activities around the new number. Funding for the Biofuels Center of North Carolina was eliminated ($4.3 million annually).…

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has conducted a Survey of Federal Funds for Research and Development for fiscal years 2010-12. In total, federal R&D obligations were $144.7 billion in FY10. The top state recipients, in absolute terms, are California ($28.3 billion, representing 19.6% of the national total), Maryland ($17.0 billion, 11.8%), Virginia ($9.3 billion, 6.4%), Massachusetts ($8.9 billion, 6.1%), and Texas ($7.3 billion, 5.0%). The states and territories receiving the least are Delaware, North Dakota, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and finally Wyoming. SSTI has prepared a table of federal R&D obligations by state for FY10, as well as federal R&D obligations as a percentage of states' gross state product. As in FY09, California's R&D obligations are largely attributable to the Department of Defense, which spent $16.7 billion in total development, with more than $1 billion in research. In terms of R&D obligations as a percentage of gross state product, Maryland is at the top, with 5.75 percent. New Mexico, Washington, DC, Massachusetts, and Virginia follow. Also similar to FY09, Maryland's largest source of R…

Small businesses often are surrounded by a myriad resources and potential partners that could help leverage their products and services to innovate and grow, but they are not always aware of how to access them. In order to remedy this lack of strong regional networks, the Obama administration has attempted to connect existing businesses, institutions of higher education, economic development organizations, investors, small businesses, and startups to create regional clusters that stimulate economic growth through the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Economic Development Administration (EDA) regional cluster initiatives. The EDA and SBA have led a total of 50 pilot programs around the nation thus far. A commissioned study of the first two years of the SBA's 10 pilot cluster initiatives in which the agency invested $1 million toward regional industries and advanced defense technologies found a significant correlation between these initiatives and economic growth. The 10 SBA cluster programs include three Advanced Defense Technology (ADT) clusters focused on defense-related technologies and seven Regional Innovation Clusters (RIC) focused on a variety of…

Green jobs have been at the center of a number of controversies in economic development circles over the past decade. Key among these debates is whether or not sufficient job opportunities exist to justify large public investments in green job-training programs. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that, at least at the federal level, a great deal of uncertainty remains about the green job labor market. The report lays out a number of challenges for green jobs initiatives at the Department of Labor, where job placement is only at 55 percent of its target levels. In doing so, the GAO report shows that there is room for improvement in green jobs programs at the federal, state and regional level. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is the key federal agency for supporting green jobs initiatives around the country. Since 2009, $595 million in federal funds have been allocated for green jobs programs within DOL, according to the GAO report. The Green Jobs Act of 2007 created the department's first framework for green jobs investment and several of its programs, though most of these activities remained unfunded until the American Recovery…