SSTI Digest

Peter Slate will preside as chief executive officer over the Arizona Technology Enterprises, the newly created limited liability company formed by spinning off Arizona State University's technology transfer office.

U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, has called on the Senate’s top appropriators to help reverse budget elimination of two key programs designed to strengthen the technological competitiveness of small businesses.

Snowe and a bipartisan group of 14 other senators released a letter calling on Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Ranking Member Robert Byrd (D-WV) to help identify new sources of funding “to alleviate the severe impact” of FY 2003 cuts in the Federal and State Technical Partnership (FAST) and Rural Outreach Programs (ROP) administered by the Small Business Administration. Both federal programs provide matching grants to state initiatives to help small businesses with technology development and commercialization.

A bi-partisan group of Senators have cosponsored the "New Homestead Economic Opportunity Act" to help renew the promise of the original Homestead Act to attract new residents and businesses to rural areas suffering from high out-migration. Introduced by Senator Bryon Dorgan (D-ND) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) this week, the bill provides incentive tools including a $3 billion venture capital fund.

S. 602 calls for a federal injection of $200 million annually between 2004-2013 into the New Homestead Venture Capital Fund, after $100 million in investments have been made each year from private and nonfederal sources. The purpose of the fund would be to strengthen the economies of qualifying counties – those which have seen a net outmigration exceeding 10 percent over the past 20 years – by:

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has posted a preliminary list of the 10 U.S. universities receiving the most patents for inventions during calendar year 2002. The University of California tops the list for the ninth consecutive year. The table below also presents the school's 2001 ranking and total. 

Wrapping up its 2003 session earlier this month, the West Virginia State Legislature passed three bills designed to help build a technology-based economy.

Earlier this week, Colorado Chief Technology Officer John Hansen released a statewide plan to develop biotechnology and life sciences industry sectors in Colorado. Colorado's Place in the Sun: A Bioscience Future provides analysis, direction and recommended actions for three key sector areas — workforce development, business development, and research development.

After outlining the state's current strengths in biotech and life sciences, the plan identifies several key factors for success:

Conventional wisdom in the technology-based economic development community is that increased access to risk capital is critical for building competitive economies. Establishing a causal relationship between early-stage capital and employment growth external to the companies receiving the funds has been difficult, however.

A new working paper from the University of Vienna presents a model linking venture capital investment and job growth on the national level. Does Venture Capital Investment Spur Employment Growth?, written by Ansgar Belke, Rainer Fehn and Neil Foster, finds "a one unit increase in venture capital will increase employment growth by 1.8 percentage points."

Conventional wisdom in the technology-based economic development community is that increased access to risk capital is critical for building competitive economies. Establishing a causal relationship between early-stage capital and employment growth external to the companies receiving the funds has been difficult, however.

A new working paper from the University of Vienna presents a model linking venture capital investment and job growth on the national level. Does Venture Capital Investment Spur Employment Growth?, written by Ansgar Belke, Rainer Fehn and Neil Foster, finds "a one unit increase in venture capital will increase employment growth by 1.8 percentage points."

The Southern Growth Policies Board has released a toolkit to help communities understand the knowledge economy and how new economic forces affect quality of life and economic development. Seeing the Future: The Knowledge Economy seeks to inform people about the knowledge, skills and resources needed to compete in today’s economy.

Last week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released the latest edition of Characteristics of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers in the United States, which reports characteristics for 2001. Valuable data is presented in the report on the demographic and employment characteristics of doctoral scientists and engineers in the U.S.

NSF has performed this survey every two years since 1973. Current and past reports can be found online at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/cdse/start.htm

Tucson gains Community Investment Business Center, New Tech Park building

The Tucson Citizen reports the second incarnation of the Tucson Technology Incubator, which closed in January, has opened as the Community Investment Business Center. The new center, under the auspices of the Community Investment Corp. and funded partially by the Pima County Industrial Development  Authority, offers business assistance with the aid of five University of Arizona interns and limited office space for client companies, according to the article.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology of the U.S. Department of Commerce has announced it is accepting proposals from organizations in Florida, Hawaii and South Dakota to establish Manufacturing Technology Centers under the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Program. Approximately $4 million will be available to support these centers.

Currently, the MEP national system consists of over 400 centers and field offices located throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The objective of these centers is to enhance productivity, technological performance, and strengthen the global competitiveness of small- and medium-sized U.S.-based manufacturing firms. Services are provided through the coordinated efforts of a regionally-based manufacturing extension center and local technology resources.