The House has now passed 10 of the 12 annual appropriations bills for FY 2021. Within the total funding is support for key innovation priorities, including $35 million for EDA’s Build-to-Scale (i.e., Regional Innovation Strategies), $6 million for SBA’s innovation clusters program and $4 million for Federal and State Technology Partnerships (FAST). SSTI’s Innovation Advocacy Council had made expanding funding for each of these initiatives a priority for the year.

High-risk/high-reward research can yield breakthroughs, produce new technologies, and allow the surrounding region to remain economically relevant. However, the scientific community remains concerned that research and development-focused policies, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, continue to be conservative with their goals by only encouraging incremental growth that can yield tangible results in shorter amounts of time. These concerns, and potential policy solutions, are explored in a recently published research paper by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The White House has released reviews from the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Defense, and Health and Human Services in response to the president’s Executive Order on “America’s Supply Chains.” Vulnerabilities in supply chains were assessed in four key product areas: semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging; large capacity batteries; critical mineral and materials; and, pharmaceuticals and advanced pharm

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced a new competition for awards to support industry-driven consortia in developing technology roadmaps that will address high-priority research challenges to grow the advanced manufacturing sector in the U.S. and is inviting applications to its Manufacturing USA Technology Roadmap (MfgTech) grants program.

Enrollment in the nation’s institutions of higher education is an important indicator of the knowledge capital available to local innovation economies. This edition of Useful Stats explores enrollment data from the recently updated National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) report , Current Term Enrollment Estimates, covering spring term enrollment trends at degree-granting institutions of higher education.

Regardless of the approach used, the goal of every economic development program in the country is to create economic opportunity within a specific geographic area.

West Virginia has updated its Vision 2025: West Virginia Science & Technology Plan (S&T Plan), which identifies four areas (life sciences, computer and data science, advanced manufacturing, and advanced energy) representing significant and growing university-based research and educational activities that align with the state’s target industries and workforce development goals. 

Helping to meet the challenge of fighting a global pandemic while growing high-quality jobs during an economic downturn, the life sciences industry showed its strength over the course of the past year. An update to the biennial Life Science Workforce Trends report from the Coalition of State Bioscience Institutes (CSBI) asserts that it is because of the industry’s skilled-talent base and sets out to assess the industry’s position and priorities in 2021, focusing on its demands for workforce and talent.

Understanding enrollment trends at the nation’s institutions of higher education — an important indicator of the knowledge capital and skilled workforce available to local innovation economies — is paramount in developing appropriate strategies to bolster local and regional innovation and entrepreneurship. While many institutional reports cover only one or a few years’ worth of enrollment data, evaluating long-run trends can help policymakers and program designers identify issues that might otherwise be hidden, enabling the development of more effective policies and programs.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is soliciting nominations of qualified former and current small business owners, community leaders, officials from small business trade associations, and academic institutions to serve on the Council of Underserved Communities (CUC). The CUC is being restored to help support the SBA’s prioritization of equity across its programs and initiatives. SBA seeks candidates representing both urban and underserved communities.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced over $30 million in federal funding, matched by over $35 million in private sector funds, for 68 projects that will accelerate the commercialization of promising energy technologies. The awards are expected to help transfer solutions from the National Labs to the marketplace and work toward the president’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The May jobs report that was released last Friday contained better news than the disappointing numbers from April, with May figures showing 559,000 jobs added and unemployment declining by 0.3 percentage point to 5.8 percent. But the jobs picture remains complicated.

This week, the Senate passed the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, a legislative package that includes the Endless Frontier Act. The tech-based economic development community should be excited about many initiatives authorized in the bill, including $10 billion for regional technology hubs, $100 billion in new R&D-related activities, and an expansion of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program.

The Georgia Research Alliance has announced a new five-year initiative to fight sickle cell disease that will include creation of a GRA Eminent Scholar chair at the Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA). The Calvin Smyre GRA Eminent Scholar Chair, named for Rep.

Outlining the need for a new national effort to build regional innovation economies, a panel of experts gave testimony to the Research and Technology subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, chaired by Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI). The panel focused on how regions have developed their innovation economies and how those experiences could be replicated across the country with federal support.

We are excited to announce that SSTI’s annual conference is back and in-person, Nov. 1-3, in Little Rock, Arkansas. More than ever, now is the time to reconnect with those in the field and make new connections as we revitalize our plans for the innovation economy. Whether you are resetting your agenda, expanding your initiatives, evaluating your success, or searching for new paths to emerge stronger from the pandemic, we will have ideas, sessions and resources for you to explore at SSTI’s 2021 Annual Conference: Focusing on the Future.

The House Committee on Appropriations advanced its first FY 2022 funding bills this week. Included in the financial services bill was $10 million for each of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s three main innovation programs: Regional Innovation Clusters, Federal and State Technology Partnership (FAST), and Growth Accelerators Fund Competition.

The federal government has not developed strategic economic intelligence to understand the competitive position of its traded sectors, and the time is now for a more advanced technology strategy and that will require a better data collection system. That is one of the key takeaways of a recent report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). The report identifies three key areas with major statistical gaps and calls on Congress to fund modernization and expansion of federal statistical agency IT systems.

Nearly 1 in 6 adults carrying outstanding student loan debt (1 in 3 among 18 to 29 year olds), with both the number of borrowers and the debt amount increasing in recent decades.

Forthcoming research suggests venture development organizations, that is, those publicly-supported nonprofits that combine risk financing with expert technical assistance to grow local innovation-based startups, should give careful consideration to the exit histories of the venture capitalists they partner with to move the VDO’s portfolio firms through seed and series A investment rounds.

Recession can drive increases in entrepreneurship as laid off workers look for other opportunities and start their own businesses. Increases in business startup activity throughout the 2020 recession were greater than any time in the 15 years prior. This edition of Useful Stats examines data from the Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics (BFS) series covering business initiation activity as indicated by applications for an Employer Identification Number (EIN).

When planning and evaluating programs and policies in local and regional innovation economies, a key measure is the amount of private business research and development (R&D) activity taking place, typically found in the Business Enterprise Research & Development Survey (BERD). The Census Bureau, in cooperation with the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), is seeking public comment on planned updates to the BERD survey.

Whether or not your state embraced strict measures in an attempt to reduce virus spread, the current pandemic has created the need for reflection and revision of how each of us go about our lives. The same opportunity has arisen for the public and private sectors to rethink how they engage in many core functions.

This edition of Useful Stats explores data from the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) on new utility and plant patents granted in the U.S. by state/territory for the five-year period from 2016 to 2020. This analysis includes only utility and plant patents as these types are those associated with the invention of new products and services, and excludes reissued patents and those issued for purely aesthetic designs.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund announced $1.25 billion in coronavirus-related “rapid response” funding to 863 CDFIs. Among the recipients were SSTI members Launch NY and Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund.