Governors in the Southern states were presented with findings from a new report on the growing gap in middle-skill jobs and urged to adopt a three-part policy framework for reversing the trend during the Southern Governors' Association annual meeting last week in Asheville, NC. The report found that middle-skill jobs account for 51 percent of the region's jobs today, but only about 43 percent of the region's workers are currently trained at this level.

Even through the enduring global economic downturn, nations across the world have targeted technology-based economic development initiatives to build their respective country's science and technology (S&T) sectors. The governments contend that building their respective country's Next Economy is necessary to compete in a globalizing world and increase quality of living for their citizens. Canada, India and the European Union have announced initiatives that could help grow their respective countries S&T sectors.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released the 10th edition of its annual Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard. Each year, OECD examines major trends in the global innovation economy and uses 180 indicators to evaluate the high-tech economies of OECD countries, as well as select non-OECD countries. The overarching theme of this year's release is the increased importance of the non-OECD countries, including Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, Indonesia, the People's Republic of China and South Africa, together dubbed the BRIICS countries.

MaRS Discovery District, Toronto's innovation and entrepreneurship center, has launched a $30 million early stage clean tech fund, the first of its kind in Canada. This week, the group announced that it had raised its fundraising goal entirely from private sources, and that released information about its first two investments. The MaRS Cleantech Fund LP portfolio companies will be encouraged to seek maximum support from MaRS. Read the announcement... Interested in how U.S. states and regions are catalyzing clean tech innovation?

The European Union (EU) launched the Technology Transfer Offices — Connecting Innovation and Research Centers and Laboratories in Europe (European TTO CIRCLE ), a network of tech transfer offices at Europe's 25 largest public research organizations. With the goal of increasing the market and societal impacts of publicly-funded research, the European TTO CIRCLE members already have adopted a set of several initiatives including:

As global economies shift, developing nations are attempting to transition as suppliers of raw materials to nations that are producers of value-added goods. Africa has been a major supplier of raw materials to the developed world. However, it drastically lagged behind in the production of valued-added goods. Recently, African nations have attempted to reinvent their economic development efforts from suppliers to producers by developing programs to grow tech-based economies.

Each year, Southern Growth Policies Board honors Southern initiatives that are improving economic opportunities and quality of life in the region. The 2010 Innovator Awards will be chosen from creative initiatives in the region that aim to help communities recover from the recession. Innovator Awards are presented annually to one organization in each of Southern Growth's 13 member states, and winners are recognized at Southern Growth's Annual Conference. The deadline for nominations is Nov 6.

The United Nation’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva recently announced an expansion of its online free searchable patent application database. In addition to containing an existing 1.65 million international patents filed for protection under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) from 30 countries, the database now includes digital information for 1.49 million additional records from the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, Singapore, Vietnam, the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), and Cuba.

Thomson Reuters has updated their 2008 report on the Chinese boom in patenting. In 2006, the 11th Chinese Five-Year Plan for national economic and social development made innovation a priority, with the goal of creating an "innovation-oriented" society by 2020. Over the past few years, China's increase in overseas patent filings has outpaced other leading countries. The report examines the approaches used by the China government to boost patent activity, including increased R&D expenditures, tax deductions for R&D investments and grants to patent registrants.

Southerners voiced that focusing on innovation and technology-based business operations, supporting entrepreneurship, identifying community asset, developing skilled workforce and increasing community involvement in economic development strategies are vital for the South to recover from the current economic downtown according to a recent report — The Road to Recovery is Named Main Street — from the Southern Growth Policies Board. The report was assembled using comments of over 2,300 citizens from communities across the south.

In the “2011 Global R&D Funding Forecast,” researchers from Battelle and R&D Magazine project consistent and positive global R&D spending in 2011. Global R&D (including public, private and nonprofit spending) is projected to increase by 3.6 percent from $1.15 trillion to almost $1.2 trillion. However, 2011 R&D as a percentage of global GDP will remain constant at 1.9 percent. This increase is attributed to a shift in the geographic distribution of investment.

In a recent speech in front of China's National People's Congress, China's Premier Wen Jiabao outlined the country's 12th five-year plan (2011-2115). The plan will focus heavily on boosting consumption through sustainable growth fueled by renewable energies and state support of strategic, emerging industries. Expenditures on R&D should reach 2.2 percent of GDP. Much of this R&D investment will be targeted in three sectors — healthcare, energy and technology.

Basic biomedical research has a greater academic impact and clinical research a greater societal impact over a 15 to 20 years timescale, according to the findings of Project Retrosight — a multinational, four-year study from RAND Europe and the Health Economics Research Group (HERG) at Brunel University. This study was based on data collected from 29 case studies on basic biomedical and clinical cardiovascular and stroke grant-funded, research projects in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Recent announcements of new and emerging technology incubators range from Google's selection of Cape Town, South Africa to launch a pilot incubator supporting technology entrepreneurs that it hopes to replicate globally to Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley's plan to create a statewide business incubator focusing on workforce training. Select announcements from across the globe are highlighted below.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev plans to spur Russia's economic modernization through the Skolkovo innovation center. Currently in the planning stage, the research hub will be at the heart of Russia's modernization strategy. Energy, IT, telecommunications, biotechnology and nuclear technology are the five "presidential" research priorities at Skolkovo. On his current American visit, President Medvedev will attempt to attract talent and private investment from Silicon Valley. Cisco already has committed to a partnership with Skolkovo.

Want to participate in a new concept in innovation clusters? The Southern Advanced Materials in Transportation Alliance (SAMTA) is a regional innovation cluster that promotes the research, commercialization, and production of new and specialized materials important to the automotive and aerospace industries. Although traditional clusters are based on geographic concentration, SAMTA will use telecommunications networks to minimize geographic distance and facilitate the industry network. The Economic Development Administration has provided seed funding for this project.

The Scottish Government announced last month a funding plan for the university system that directs more than 10 percent of current funding into a new Horizon Fund created to make targeted investments in research, technology transfer, and entrepreneurial development.

Bank bailouts may be capturing all of the headlines, but a new initiative from the European Union (EU) promises to inject a considerable pool of money during the downturn to accelerate the development of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. The European Commission, as well as participants from the European research community and industry will contribute nearly 1 billion Euros (U.S. $1.28 billion) to the public-private partnership over the next six years to fund research.

Universities in Canada are a major component of the country's science and technology ecosystem, and as gauged by funding, they performed 36 percent of Canada's R&D activities in 2007. In the U.S. comparatively, universities accounted for 13 percent of the R&D performed in the country.