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SSTI Digest
Geography: Missouri
Missouri Passes Embryonic Stem Cell Amendment
Voters in Missouri approved, 51 percent to 49 percent, an amendment to the state constitution that will prohibit state or local governments from preventing embryonic stem cell research. The amendment also defines what type of research is permitted.
The vote comes after years of controversy in the state with frequent attempts by some state legislators to restrict the research in the state. The amendment is the first of its kind in the nation to remove the issue from the legislature and put it directly to the voters.
The amendment will accomplish the following, according to the fair ballot language on the website of the Missouri Secretary of State:
Harvard Prof Receives Kauffman Prize Medal for Research on Social Networks and Innovation
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has awarded its second Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship to Professor Toby Stuart of the Harvard Business School. The medal is given every two years to a scholar under the age of 40 whose research has made a significant contribution to the study of entrepreneurship and innovation. Stuart accepted the medal last month, along with a cash award of $50,000, at the Academy of Management's annual meeting in Atlanta.
At the ceremony, the Kauffman Foundation cited Professor Stuart's pioneering research on social networks and their effect on entrepreneurship as an example of outstanding contribution to the field. Stuart's latest research suggests that entrepreneurs must be perceived positively within their local entrepreneurship community in order to create successful new firms.
As a service to those Digest readers who do not regularly review the latest academic research in the field, SSTI offers the follow summaries of a selected set of Professor Stuart's most recent articles:
People & Organizations
James DeLong is the new vice president of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association.
People & Organizations
Rob Monsees left his position as Gov. Matt Blunt's deputy chief of staff-policy to become the executive director of the Missouri Technology Corporation.
People & Organizations
Effective in May, Ken Janoski will be the president and CEO of BioGenerator, a nonprofit in St. Louis that helps scientists commercialize their discoveries.
Missouri Unveils $450M TBED Strategy
Not all of the pieces critical to building an innovation-based economy have to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, as might be suggested in the Florida and Pennsylvania stories above. Gov. Matt Blunt's Feb. 2 call for the state to provide $2 million for a new Missouri Life Science Incubator - designed to help researchers move their science from the laboratory to commercial businesses - provides a case in point. The proposed facility would be located on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus.
The $2 million investment is a new part of the governor's $450 million Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative, which already includes proposals for two other life sciences facilities at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The first is a new $150 million Health Science Center designed to grow the university’s research base and second is a $15 million plant science research center that will seek to develop and enhance plant-based products.
Kauffman Launches eVenturing™ Website
To help entrepreneurs start and manage businesses, the Kauffman Foundation recently launched Kauffman eVenturing™ ( www.eVenturing.org). Designed for growth-oriented entrepreneurs, the new website provides access to current information, organized around key subjects such as finance and accounting, people and human resources, sales and marketing, products and services, operations, and the entrepreneur. New collections of articles will be featured monthly, including original material and an aggregation of “the best of the best” existing articles. Fresh content also will be added through a link-blog to articles and tools on a variety of subjects. Visit the website at http://www.eVenturing.org.
People
Warren Erdman, formerly vice president of corporate affairs at Kansas City Southern, is the newly selected chairman of the board of the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City.
Kauffman Foundation Unveils iBridge to Facilitate University Technology Transfer
Designed to ease the transaction burden on university technology transfer offices and encourage more open and efficient access to research, the Kauffman Foundation recently unveiled iBridge, a web-based platform under the Kauffman Innovation Network.
The flexible nature of the iBridge platform allows universities to adapt it to best complement their existing processes for collaboration and technology transfer, according to a press release from the Kauffman Foundation. The application may be used by universities to license and distribute a variety of information including software, research tools, databases, teaching materials, surveys, and reference materials. To safeguard a university's interest in its intellectual property, posting a discovery on the website formally discloses that discovery and starts a record-keeping file.
Entrepreneurial Activity Strongest Among U.S. Immigrants, Males and Latinos, According to Kauffman Index
Between 1996 and 2004, an average 0.36 percent of the U.S. population created a new business each month, representing approximately 500,000 new businesses per month, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.
Using matched data from the monthly Current Population Surveys, a national population survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Kauffman Foundation created a new measure to provide information on recent entrepreneurial trends at the national level. The Index looks at business creation at the individual owner level by gender, education, region, age, immigrant status, and major industries.
People
John Gardner has been named the first vice president for research and economic development for the University of Missouri system.