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SSTI Digest
People
Past SSTI conference sponsor ANGLE Technology Group named Mark DeSantis to serve as managing director of consulting and management and Lisa Smith to become vice president of marketing.
People
Lenzie Harcum, former program director at the University of North Carolina SBTDC, is now assistant vice president of biosciences at the NYC Economic Development Corporation.
People
After seven months on the job, Connecticut Innovations President and CEO Chandler Howard is leaving to pursue an opportunity to establish a community bank in New Haven.
Walkin' the Tech Talkin' Gov Walk
Over the past six years, SSTI has dedicated a portion of the Digest to coverage on the legislative priorities of governors across the nation through the Tech Talkin' Govs series. As they say, talk is cheap. So this year, we are extending that coverage to track how the Governors' proposals fared in the respective legislative sessions. In the coming months, as many sessions come to an end, SSTI will take a look back on the governors' state-of-the-state, budget, and inaugural addresses and report the good, the bad and the ugly of the 2006 legislative decisions.
Georgia
Washington Releases Global Competitiveness Recommendations
It could be frustration at the lack of action by the federal government, displeasure with the direction of national policy or a sense of urgency and need, but states are increasingly taking matters into their own hands when it comes to many major issues. Examples abound, including states taking the lead on dealing with global warming, energy policy, health care, food quality assurance, stem cell research, broadband coverage and even foreign trade. Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire may have summed up this emerging Neo/post-federalism movement late last month when she said, "Washington is its own small nation in this new world economy."
Recent Research: Dimensions of an Individual Global Mindset
Successful companies are forced to change business strategies as market realities shift. It happens all of the time. Browse the business section of your local bookstore and you'll see dozens of titles preaching the need for companies to adopt, adapt and innovate. The continuing restructuring of the U.S. durable manufacturing sector, as alluded to in the Useful Stats piece below, is a vivid example of the importance of abandoning old mindsets for industry: change or die.
Useful Stats: Change in Per Capita Income by State, 2000-2005
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) recently published its 2005 estimates of state personal income. According to the release, growth in U.S. per capita income slowed in 2005 increasing 4.6 percent in 2005, down from 5 percent growth in 2004. Regionally, the most significant increases in per capita income accompanied faster population growth, occurring in the Southwest states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and the Rocky Mountain states of Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. Florida, Nevada and Virginia round out the top 10 states for percent change in per capita income.
Useless Stats?: Approval Ratings for the 50 Governors
We're not sure how useful these stats really are, but given the political proclivity of so many of our readers and the upcoming gubernatorial elections this fall in 36 states, we thought we'd share a link from SurveyUSA.com presenting the current approval ratings for all 50 governors. The survey results, sponsored by many media sources, are presented in "net job approval" order, which is determined by subtracting a governor's disapproval rating from the percentage of respondents who approve of the governor's performance. While the unweighted average net job approval score is 11 percent, governors in 14 states have negative net approval scores. Nine of these same states occupy rankings in the bottom 16 spots on SSTI's five-year change in per capita income table mentioned above. SurveyUSA's table is available at: http://www.surveyusa.com/50State2006/50StateGovernor060412Net.htm
New Report Identifies States' Investments for Biosciences
States and regions across the U.S. are continuing to make significant investments and implement policies to capitalize on the growing biosciences sector. However, a challenge they face in coming years is a leveling off of federal bioscience R&D dollars, concludes a recent report prepared by Battelle, SSTI and PMP Consulting.
Recent Research: GAO Looks at State Tobacco Settlement Distributions
Despite all the press generated each time a state commits multimillion portions of its tobacco settlement distribution toward R&D and technology-based economic development (TBED), readers may be surprised to learn economic development activities captured only 4 percent of the total payments in 2005, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Unfortunately, the report reflects one of the agonizing realities of how poorly federal agencies understand what states are doing to support the nation's innovation system: Much of what is generally accepted by the field as investments to encourage or support the knowledge-based economy is buried in several other categories of the report, including health related, education and even general purposes.
USPTO Releases List of Top 13 Universities Receiving Most Patents in 2005
For the 12th consecutive year, the University of California tops all universities for the most patents for inventions, according to a list recently released by the U.S Patent and Trademark Office. The preliminary list reveals the top 13 U.S. universities receiving the most utility patents during calendar year 2005. All campuses are included in each school's total.
While the University of California's 390 patents in 2005 earned it top honors again, the figure reflects an 8 percent decline from the institution's 424 total in 2004 and 11 percent less than 2003. The California Institute of Technology experienced an even greater drop in patent activity between 2004 and 2005, slipping 25 percent to third overall with 101 patents. Massachusetts Institute of Technology moved into second with 136, a 3 percent increase over 2004.
Dual Enrollment Has Little Effect on Postsecondary Matriculation in Kentucky, Study Finds
Increasingly states are making it easier for high school students to participate in college courses while still attending high school. The goal of dual enrollment is to encourage more students to attend college, giving them a leg up on a degree. A new report by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education suggests the efforts are not working in Kentucky. Encouraging dual enrollment programs to provide academic rather than technical coursework may increase the matriculation rates of dually enrolled students, though.
Dual enrollment has doubled in Kentucky over the last five years. However, findings of a recent study examining dual enrollment data between 2001-02 and 2004-05 indicate that dual credit programs do not appear to enhance overall college matriculation rates.