Three More S&T Papers Released in NGA Series

The National Governors’ Association has released the fourth, fifth, and sixth papers in its series on the New Economy. The latest two are touted as providing “a blueprint for replicating the economic successes of high tech meccas like California’s Silicon Valley [and] Route 128 in Massachusetts. All six papers can be downloaded from the NGA web site: http://www.nga.org. The three new papers are described briefly below.



Information Technology: Creating Real Change for Small Business, by Jeffrey W. Blodgett, Vice President for Research at the Connecticut Economic Resource Center. The paper calls on the states to streamline business licensing and permitting processes for entrepreneurs and start-up businesses. Then states are encouraged to create web-based service delivery to facilitate and expedite business growth. Blodgett reviewed states’ current web sites, finding only 16 offered visitors the ability to download business forms. Two states had electronic filing capabilities for limited forms.

Blodgett identifies several impediments to changing the current systems within states, and examples of how Pennsylvania overcame these obstacles. Best practices for one-stop business assistance are described for Kentucky, Montana, New York and Washington as well.

Using Research and Development to Grow State Economies, by Dan Berglund and Marianne Clarke, SSTI Executive Director and Research Director, respectively. The report identifies research and development (R&D) as a fundamental economic development building block in the new economy and calls on states to invest in universities and the private sector as ways to ensure that they have strong R&D bases.

The paper identifies the elements of a technology-based economy and the implications for the state’s R&D base. Sixteen specific recommendations and examples of successful state efforts are described to address the need to:

• Build intellectual infrastructure, such as universities and public or private research labs to generate new knowledge and discoveries.
• Create "spillovers of knowledge" or mechanisms that transform new ideas to the marketplace by removing barriers to the commercialization of university-developed technology, encouraging access to federal labs, and providing seed funding to industry associations and technology councils and that promote communication among companies.
• Enhance physical infrastructure, including high-quality telecommunications systems and affordable, high-speed Internet connections.
• Produce highly trained and technically skilled workers.
• Facilitate high-tech companies’ access to capital.
• Encourage entrepreneurial cultures, where people view starting a company as routine rather than unusual.

Building States Economies By Promoting University-Industry Technology Transfer, by Louis G. Tornatsky, Ph.D., senior principal associate with Battelle Memorial Institute. The author examines the importance of state universities’ patent and licensing agreements to economic development plans and provides policy makers with strategies for promoting university-industry technology transfer.

The report outlines seven strategies for promoting transfer, including:

• encourage university-industry partnerships;
• invest in entrepreneurial support organizations;
• enable private sector investment in new technologies and technology-based companies;
• remove legal barriers to university-industry technology transfer;
• champion the role of universities in economic development;
• attend to human resource and quality-of-life issues; and
• monitor federal policies and programs affecting technology transfer.