SSTI Digest

Publisher's Note Since 1999, SSTI has reviewed each of the governor's State of the States and inaugural and budget addresses for references involving tech-based economic development. Since 2001, we've provided relevant excerpts as part of the SSTI Weekly Digest. This year's coverage begins with this issue, and as you'll see, it's clear that innovation and workforce are playing a major role in this year's speeches. Our coverage will continue over the next several weeks.

We've been alerted by a number of states to expect major announcements in the coming weeks, and as these excerpts indicate, 2006 is likely to be an active year for those that are concerned about innovation. As we report in our second article, American voters, if not all opinion leaders, are recognizing the importance of innovation to the country's future.

Americans increasingly recognize the nation's status as the world's economic superpower is threatened, based on research findings released by the Business Roundtable last Thursday. After four months of focus groups, interviews with opinion leaders and three national voter polls, the roundtable concluded there is widespread public recognition of the growing competitiveness crisis in this country and strong national support for policies designed to strengthen America’s capabilities in mathematics and science.

Whether Congress and the Bush Administration will address the concerns remains to be seen, roundtable leaders suggest.

A new report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) places North America at the top, in terms of participation in high-expectation entrepreneurial activity. The report looks at the prevalence of high-expectation activity internationally and analyzes bivariate relationships between high-expectation prevalence rates and entrepreneurial framework conditions.

High-expectation is used to emphasize the fact that the GEM operationalization is based on expected rather than realized job creation, the report states. Some of the key findings include:

The challenge for industry, academic leaders and policymakers in Massachusetts over the next few years is to translate the competitive strengths of the state's economy into new companies and new jobs, the ninth annual Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy indicates.

While many competitor states and countries have been working through public-private collaborations to develop long-term strategic plans for future investments, Massachusetts has not had a recent collaborative effort, the report notes. Now is the time, it argues for industry and academic leaders to join with policymakers in identifying, planning and investing in the state's competitive assets for the Commonwealth's future economic vitality. Findings of the 2005 index include:

The Department of Economic and Workforce Development at the University of Southern Mississippi is seeking someone to fill a tenure-track assistant professor position. Specialization in regional workforce development is preferred; however, other areas of specialization, such as disaster recovery, entrepreneurship, rural development, technology transfer, or low-income communities, will be strongly considered. The candidate will teach and mentor students in the department’s on-campus and executive format masters and doctoral programs and take a leading part in the growth and development of these programs. A doctorate degree is required. A full job description is available through the SSTI Job Corner at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm.

David Archer is the new managing director for Nevada's Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology.

Robert Chernow was appointed to the newly created position of vice provost for entrepreneurship at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The Greensboro, N.C.-based Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship has a new president, Michael Hentschel.

Sandy Johnson was promoted to CEO of the Mid-America Manufacturing Technology Center.

David Archer is the new managing director for Nevada's Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology.

Robert Chernow was appointed to the newly created position of vice provost for entrepreneurship at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The Greensboro, N.C.-based Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship has a new president, Michael Hentschel.

Sandy Johnson was promoted to CEO of the Mid-America Manufacturing Technology Center.

Donna Kent is the new president and CEO of the Arizona Technology Council.

Dan Lynch was named president of the Greensboro Economic Development Partnership.