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.

Arizona State University professor James Collins is the new assistant director for biological sciences at the National Science Foundation.

Pat Snider, the first CEO for BioGenerator in St. Louis, announced her departure from the two-year-old organization by the end of the year.

The Greater Flagstaff Economic Council has announced Lewis Humphreys is its new vice president. Humphreys was with the Greater Tucson Economic Council.

Of Arizona's 664,454 businesses, 98 percent qualify as small businesses with fewer than 100 employees, according to a study released by the Arizona Department of Commerce and the Arizona State University's Center for the Advancement of Small Business. The study was conducted by the Masters Consulting Group (MCG), an MBA student organization at ASU's College of Business.

Arizona

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Tenants of the Sante Fe Business Incubator have seen their one-story building increase from 10,000 sq. ft. to 30,000 sq. ft., according to a story by the Albuquerque Journal. The expansion is part of a $2.5 million project funded by the federal Economic Development Administration (EDA), the Regional Development Corporation and other agencies.

A Blueprint for Prosperity and Jobs, a comprehensive strategic plan to foster and sustain job growth, business success and community vitality in Missouri, has been released by the Missouri Department of Economic Development. The product of two years of research, the plan addresses Missouri's need to focus its resources on building a knowledge-based economy, with emphasis on businesses that generate key technologies and have tremendous growth potential.

Bill Duncan is the first president of the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute, which held its inaugural event at the end of March.

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.

Tucson gains Community Investment Business Center, New Tech Park building

While rural regions strive to establish basic high-speed Internet connections, larger cities such as St. Louis, Oklahoma City and Roanoke, Va., are looking to establish free, wireless Internet access across several blocks to encourage economic development. Recent reports show efforts are underway to speed the technology's deployment in each of the metro areas.

New university-based research efforts in biodesign, nanotechnology, embedded systems and virtual manufacturing show that Arizona has stepped forward to compete in the knowledge economy, according to a recent study by Morrison Institute for Public Policy, a unit of Arizona State University.

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.

Arizona Universities Partner to Create Joint Biomedical Campus

The new Arizona Technology Council (ATC) has announced its vision and mission as a non-profit association committed to growing member companies and the technology industry in Central and Northern Arizona.

Arizona was one of the first states to embrace cluster-based economic development in the early 1990s. While the formal clusters have had varying degrees of success since then, one of the challenges of a cluster-based approach to technology-based economic development is the fractionalized focus across sectors. Because of this, clusters can end up competing against each other for limited public resources, making cross-sector strategies difficult to identify or implement.

The St. Louis region lags behind a number of metropolitan areas including Austin, Portland, Atlanta, and Indianapolis in attracting 20- to 34-year olds to live and work in the region, according to a report released this month by the regional, nonprofit organization, FOCUS St. Louis.