SSTI Digest

Anthony Martoccia was appointed associate deputy administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Government Contracting and Business Development.

Sally Stroup, assistant secretary for postsecondary education for the U.S. Department of Education, is stepping down to pursue other interests.

The Ohio Business Alliance for Higher Education and the Economy named Reginald Wilkinson to serve as its executive director.

Innovation, flexibility, speed to market, and closeness to the customer are the common characteristics shared by successful small and medium manufacturers (SMMs), says a new report from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). The report reveals 15 best practices that are followed by successful SMMs and identifies challenges faced by manufacturers in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

The Future Success of Small and Medium Manufacturers: Challenges and Policy Issues is a follow-up to a 2001 report on the importance of SMMs during the height of the 1990s prosperity boom. Since that time, a major recession has occurred causing many shifts in the manufacturing industry.

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released Geographic Area Statistics: 2004, a report that details manufacturing statistics collected from the 2004 Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM). The report provides data on the number of all manufacturing employees, number of production workers, all employees payroll, value-added by manufactures, cost of materials, and value of shipments by state. The report also includes data by industry groups, including food, textiles, lumber, fuel, computers and transportation equipment.

Using Bureau data, SSTI has prepared a table showing the state rankings for the percent change between 2001-2004 for value-added by manufacture, value of shipments, and average value added per employee. The total value-added by U.S. manufacturers increased by 9.28 percent over the four years. Nationally, the average value-added per employee also increased by 29.68 percent.

It only seems natural that SSTI celebrate a decade of convening the premiere professional development event for the nation's tech-based economic development community in a state that, for nearly 20 years, has been a pioneer for innovative approaches to transform regional economies — Oklahoma. SSTI's 10th annual conference and pre-conference intensive workshops will be held at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City on Oct. 31-Nov. 2.

With China and India on the doorstep and U.S. universities facing an attrition of science and math students, America must do more if it wishes to produce the well trained scientific and technical workforce necessary to remain competitive in world markets. That is the overarching theme of a new national education and innovation initiative proposed by the Association of American Universities (AAU).

A white paper released by AAU details the National Defense Education and Innovation Initiative, which aims to meet economic and security challenges the U.S. will face over the next half-century. The paper contains recommendations for policy changes and investments, primarily by universities and the federal government.

While it is safe to say that new medicines, electronics, educational tools and other inventions have improved the lives of countless people, a new project by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) describes more than 100 such breakthroughs that probably would not exist if not for the practice of technology transfer.

In The Better World Project, launched Friday by AUTM, readers can learn the stories behind the Google™ search engine, Honeycrisp apple, V-chip, cochlear implant, Habitrol® nicotine patch and other products used in health care, environmental protection, agriculture, safety and 16 other fields.

Innovation and tech entrepreneurship take money — different amounts at different stages with different strings. As a result, increasing access to capital is an objective of many state and local technology-based economic development programs.

“States fill a critical gap in available finance for many of the nation’s start-ups," said Sue Strommer, chief executive officer of the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF). Discovering just how many programs across the country are working toward filling the financial needs of tech-based innovation is the goal of a current NASVF project to survey programs. All state equity-related financing programs are encouraged to participate before March 15, 2006.

For the second year in a row, Florida cities dominate the Milken Institute's top 200 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in the ability to create and sustain jobs. The top performer, Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, moved up 31 places from last year and is followed by last year's top scorer, Cape Coral-Fort Myers, and Naples-Marco Island, respectively.

Located near the John F. Kennedy Space Center, the Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville area has a diversified economy with many aerospace and defense-related industries, the report states. The area's economy has expanded at a brisk pace over the past two years, with job growth rising to 5.3 percent in 2004.

To further accommodate and cater to fledgling biotechnology, high-tech and start-up companies, the University of Pennsylvania Science Center in Philadelphia recently announced plans to add 1.85 million sq. ft. through the construction of six new buildings with retail and parking components.

According to media reports, the projects are part of a master plan titled, "Transforming the University Science Center into a Complete Venture Ecosystem." The master plan will roll out in five phases, with the first phase scheduled for July 2006 and consisting of a 150,000-square-foot building to house laboratory and retail space. The next two phases are slated for completion in 2010.

On Friday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released Science & Engineering Indicators 2006, an update for the nation's most significant, quantitative and neutral assessment of the health of the U.S. and international science and engineering communities. And, according to America's Pressing Challenge ­ Building a Stronger Foundation, a companion report to Indicators released by the National Science Board, the prognosis for the U.S. should cause concern.

Calling for "drastic changes" for America's K-12 science and mathematics classrooms, the National Science Board asserts, "Our Nation risks raising generations of students and citizens who do not know how to think critically and make informed decisions based on technical and scientific information."