Editor’s note (April 4, 2024): This article has been updated to reflect relevant programs included in the second of two FY 2024 omnibus appropriations bills.

The Office of Advanced Manufacturing at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, intends to announce an open competition for a new Manufacturing USA institute.

Many federal funding programs have the potential to support technology-based economic development (TBED) initiatives, even when technology and innovation aren’t their explicit focus. This is the case with the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). SSTI recently sat down with Christy Johnson, ARC program analyst, to learn how three of ARC’s funding opportunities can support TBED activities in the Appalachian region.

Earlier this week, the White House announced a series of actions being undertaken by federal agencies to focus on women’s health.  Both NIH and ARPA-H announced new funding opportunities centered around women’s health, while the White House and other agencies took action without indicating any funding associated with that funding

As part of the CHIPS & Science Act, Congress created the Tech Hubs program to help more regions become leaders in key technology sectors through substantial investments into regional consortia. It authorized spending $10 billion on the program from FY2023 through FY2027. But appropriations for the program are not keeping up with the vision that was embraced by strong bipartisan majorities in both chambers. For FY2023, Congress appropriated $500 million for the program, and it followed that up with only $41 million for FY2024. The need for the program has not changed.

Information on the geographic distribution of innovation and entrepreneurship is not easy to tease out of many federal statistical data sets, leading regional policy often to be based on trends in all business starts or life span and size—ignoring the fact that some firms have greater impact on regional economic growth than others. The U.S. Census Bureau is well aware of the challenge and, earlier this week, released an experimental data set that allows for an examination of state-level long-term trends in the change in high-growth firms and establishments across the nation.

This article, including the downloadable data sheet, visuals, and analysis, was updated on July 10th, 2024, to include new data from Treasury’s SSBCI Capital Program Summaries.

This article was edited on April 4th, 2024, to correct for an error in, and add to, the original data. Refer to the note at the bottom of this article for more detail.

While some college computer engineering profs may be advising their students not to worry about artificial intelligence derailing their salary projections and long-term career options, it would appear businesses are getting on with deploying the latest AI advances as quickly as possible to see what improvements might be made for the firms’ productivity rates and bottom lines. A recently released working paper from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (Fraunhofer ISI) reports on an early analysis of AI adoption in the innovation research process.

High-growth firms are often conflated with all other firms. Unfortunately, this tendency makes it extremely difficult to differentiate those with a higher likelihood of significantly impacting the economy and innovation.

Two senior leaders of state programs designed to help commercialize new intellectual property joined a TBED CoP webinar last week to discuss how they determine whether those initiatives are successful. John Hardin, executive director of the Office of Science, Technology & Innovation at the NC Department of Commerce, described the One NC Small Business Program and the evaluation process the office performs each year. They use surveys of award recipients and econometric analysis to demonstrate the program’s effectiveness.

In the 1970s, the U.S. government took antitrust actions against IBM and AT&T, causing considerable controversy. Walter Wriston, the then-president of Citibank and a key leader on Wall Street, questioned the value of doing this, apparently (according to Lina M. Khan, Federal Trade Commission Chair), likening the move to breaking up the Yankees, because they were so successful. In a presentation she delivered at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on March 13, Lina M. Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, disagreed with Wriston’s perspective.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is accepting applications for the second year of its Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program. The program will fund up to $500 million in grants over five years to conduct demonstration projects focused on advanced smart community technologies and systems that improve transportation efficiency and safety.

The United States has been the top destination for those looking to study abroad for decades. Before the onset of the pandemic, over a million students flocked from abroad to attend U.S.-based universities. Now, having dropped by 15% at the onset of the pandemic, international student enrollment is beginning to recover. Despite this recovery, the U.S. is losing market share to countries like Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom resulting in negative economic consequences.

The dynamics of population growth in the U.S. changed during the pandemic. As people migrated away to avoid the limitations of the pandemic, one region’s population loss was another region’s gain. Now, economists are analyzing the impact of migration on local economies.