Australian Minster Tony Abbott announced a $400 million AUD (approximately $352M USD) national Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda focused on building the country’s innovation economy, supporting apprenticeship and workforce programs that address the needs of industry, and promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.  The centerpiece of the agenda is a $188 million AUD (approximately $165.5M USD) initiative to create industry growth cente

Earlier this summer, President Obama announced that his administration would be taking executive action to reform immigration policy, working to improve the entirety of the immigration system by tweaking individual components. This week, at a startup incubator in Los Angeles, the President revealed at least one of those components: the H1B system.

James A. Anderson, the founder and CEO of Detroit-based retail consulting firm Urban Science, and his wife donated $25 million last week to support the entrepreneurial efforts of Wayne State University’s engineering and computer science faculty and students.

Over the past decade, two ideas have become more and more popular among innovation and economic development leaders. First, that maximizing collaboration between institutions, interest groups, stakeholders and communities is pivotal in building an innovation ecosystem that can succeed and grow over time. Second, that proximity matters, and by focusing on innovation networks at the regional or metro scale, rather than at the national or state level, initiatives can have a real, measurable economic impact. Though they seem complementary, these ideas are frequently in tension.

In Q3 2014, venture capital (VC) investments in the U.S. dropped by 30 percent from Q2 totals, according a new report from CB Insights. Q3 VC deal levels also dropped by 10 percent from Q2 totals. The severe drop, however, can be attributed to Q2 being the most successful VC quarter since Q1 2001. The good news is that the first three quarters of 2014 saw the U.S. VC investment total reach $33.75 billion – an increase of 59 percent compared to the first nine months of last year.

With Gov. Pat Quinn, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Sen.

As part of Next Century Cities, a new bipartisan, city-to-city initiative, 32 cities and their elected leaders from across the United States are uniting to recognize the importance of leveraging gigabit-level Internet for economic development. The initiative enables participating cities to work together to learn about best practices in engaging and assisting communities in developing and deploying next-generation broadband Internet so that every community has the resources needed to succeed.

Commercial knowledge and technology-intensive (KTI) industries produced nearly one-fourth of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012 ($3.8 trillion), according to a recently released National Science Foundation (NSF) Infobrief using Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Purdue University, the University City Science Center, and Washington State University announced the creation of new investment funds to support the growth of university-affiliated startups in their respective communities. These three recently announced commercialization funds all share a common trend – they will be managed or assisted in the management process via public-private partnerships.

On the heels of a recent memo from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) highlighting the difficulty middle-skill workers are having finding a route into the modern economy, reports from two tech hotspots suggest that local action is needed to ensure that tech success translates into widespread economic prosperity.

Age is a predictor of entrepreneurial success – and not in the ways that many might expect – according to a new National Bureau of Economic Research article. While the venture capital community and the media sensationalize young entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, the authors of Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship – Pierre Azoulay, J. Daniel Kim, Benjamin Jones, and Javier Miranda – find that older entrepreneurs have more success.

PitchBook and NVCA released the 2018 Q1 Venture Monitor this week, and the data show that 2017’s trends toward fewer, larger deals are only accelerating into the new year. First financings are over $5 million for the first time since Q3 of 2006, and the average angel and seed deals are at their largest sizes in at least a decade — largely due to investments under $1 million now accounting for just 39 percent of disclosed deals.

Across the nation, R&D at colleges and universities plays an important role in generating promising inventions, training our STEM talent pipeline, and supporting regional economic development. An SSTI analysis of National Science Foundation data finds that higher-education R&D (HERD) is a multi-billion dollar industry that directly employs nearly one million personnel on projects and grants in the United States. However, the locations of R&D projects and personnel differ greatly by state and region.

May 1 marks the deadline to choose a school for students considering their college options. A new tool developed by the University of Texas system and the U.S. Census Bureau can give a real sense of what students graduating from that system can expect to earn as well as the average debt graduates carry. The tool, seekUT, reveals the average earnings from each of the majors at the different schools and branch campuses one, five and 10 years after graduation.

New Jersey is considering a state program for free tuition for community college which would be phased in over several years and Virginia is proposing money for a customized workforce recruitment and training incentive program in newly proposed state budgets. Both states have new governors who have revised their predecessors’ budgets, resulting in some additional TBED initiatives in the states.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the EPA have each released new four-year strategic plans, continuing to reflect agencies’ adoption of the Trump administration’s policy directions. HHS has a streamlined science agenda that limits explicit connections to regulation while aiming to expand its overall capacity for research.

Asserting that autonomous vehicles are poised to revolutionize both transportation and the way people live and work throughout the world, KPMG has developed a readiness index that evaluates 20 countries around the world according to four pillars. They include: policy and legislation; technology and innovation; infrastructure; and consumer acceptance.

Low-income students in the Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) will be among the first allowed to use federal student aid to enroll in programs offered by nontraditional educational providers. The providers — including coding bootcamps, online courses, and employer organizations — are partnering with accredited colleges or universities through an experimental program called Educational Quality through Innovation Partnerships (EQUIP). The U.S.

The European Commission and European Investment Fund announced the creation of VentureEU – a fund-of-fund initiative intended to increase the availability of venture capital for the continent’s startup community. Through the VentureEU effort, the EU will invest approximately €410 million (approximately 507.8 million USD) across six funds run by established European fund managers.

In February, SSTI highlighted several state-led efforts to address the rural broadband gap, which affects more than 30 percent of rural America who currently lack access to adequate broadband service.

Startups and small businesses raised $30 million during the first year of equity crowdfunding (also known as regulation crowdfunding or Reg CF) with an average of $289,000 raised in a successful campaign, according to a recent report published by the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Advocacy.

In the immediate aftermath of the FY 2018 federal budget deal’s announcement, SSTI covered the increased funding for a few key programs, including Regional Innovation Strategies ($21 million) and the National Science Foundation ($7.5 billion). Today we reveal our full analysis covering several new funding line items and substantial funding increases for regional innovation organizations to consider.

The equal-weighted internal rate of return (IRR) for the venture capital (VC) industry was 6.6 percent between Q2 of 1999 and Q2 of 2017, according to the 1Q 2018 PitchBook Benchmarks. Over that 18-year timespan, several other asset classes – such as private equity (10.5 percent), debt financing (10.1 percent), fund-of-funds (8.1 percent) and several stock market indices – significantly outperformed the VC industry’s equal-weighted IRR.

In a previous Digest, SSTI discussed the positive impact that community banks have had on small business lending activity and economic growth in communities across the country since the Great Recession. In this article, SSTI shares two studies on the existing roadblocks and pessimism faced by minority small business and entrepreneurs as they seek financing through banks.

The U.S. Small Business Administration and Department of Treasury have released strategic plans through FY 2022.