The U.S. Department of Commerce released a solicitation (EDA-HDQ-OIE-2014-2004219) for Regional Innovation Grants via the 2014 Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program. Under the RIS program, Commerce is soliciting applications for three separate Regional Innovation Strategy funding awards, including:

With a recent request for information (RFI), the National Science Foundation began soliciting comments on the potential establishment of a national network of big data regional innovation hubs. These hubs will help to continue and scale up the activities and partnerships launched under the National Big Data R&D Initiative and also serve as a catalyst for economic prosperity by supporting the growth of the U.S. big data industry.

Over two years, President Obama signed the JOBS Act, a bill authorizing a variety of significant changes to securities laws. Among those changes, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was mandated with implementing rules for equity crowdfunding within 270 days – approximately January 2013. However, the rules still remain in draft form.

Federal investment in research and development appears to be falling far short of the ambitious goals set by Presidents Bush and Obama in the early part of the century. Though federal R&D spending grew by 22.5 percent from fiscal years 2002 to 2012, commitments declined substantially in 2011-12, following the spike in funding through the Recovery Act. By 2012, R&D expenditures were at their lowest levels since 2004.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently named the 50 winners of the first Growth Accelerator Fund competition, which recognizes accelerators building stronger entrepreneurial ecosystems in underserved parts of the country. Each organization will receive $50,000, in exchange for providing SBA with quarterly reports on their activities, impact and partnerships. SBA hopes to use the data to build a national database of information about accelerator programs and forge long-term relationships within the accelerator community.

Observing that legacy policies have hampered the contribution of the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories to the modern innovation economy, Brookings Institution authors Scott Andes, Mark Muro and Matthew Stepp outline a plan to engage DOE labs with regional technology clusters. The authors recommend tasking the labs with an explicit regional economic development mission, as well as opening regionally oriented microlabs that would provide a front door for smaller businesses to access lab resources.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) launched Community College Innovation Challenge – a Science Technology Engineering & Mathematics (STEM)-focused competition for teams comprised of up to five community college students, a faculty mentor, and a community/industry partner. Teams should propose innovative STEM-based solutions for real world problems within one of the five themes: big data; infrastructure security; sustainability; broadening participation in STEM; and, improving STEM education.

“People ages 20 to 34 created 22.7 percent of all new companies in last year [2013], down from 34.8 percent in 1996,” according to an article from Walter Hamilton of the LA Times. In the article, Hamilton contends that the “image of the U.S.

As American spending on research relative to GDP dwindles, the system that generated America’s economic prosperity over the past century has begun to fall apart, according to a new report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Academy calls the disintegration of the country’s national innovation system the key threat to American prosperity.

Federal funding for basic research performed at universities and colleges decreased 0.3% between FY11 and FY12, according to a new National Science Foundation (NSF) Infobrief. In FY12, basic research at universities and colleges accounted for 11.4% of total R&D obligations, and is estimated to increase to 11.8 percent of total R&D obligations in FY13, and to 12.5 percent in FY14.

Building stronger connections between universities and businesses in key industries could help generate new jobs, startups and technologies, according to an S&T roadmap released by the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC). ISTC notes that the division between the state’s research universities and companies has limited Illinois’ competitiveness, despite its high overall level of innovative activity.

Within the past month, two of America’s major research universities – the University of California system (first in total R&D expenditures, according to the NSF) and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (eleventh in total R&D expenditures) announced new funds to increase the rate at which their students, faculties, and researchers are able to commercialize their ideas into new businesses.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced its first round of investments totaling $46 million under the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. The $46 million will support more than 100 investigator-led research projects in 15 states and several countries to support the development of new tools and technologies to understand neural circuit function and capture a dynamic view of the brain in action.

New partnerships are needed between the IT community, government and institutions of higher learning to help bridge the American skills gap, according to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). In a letter to the president, PCAST notes that online solutions could provide people without secondary degrees with the training needed to fill high-demand IT jobs.

On September 28, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 850 into law, which establishes a pilot-program that will allow 15 of the state’s community colleges to launch low-cost bachelor’s degree programs in vocational fields of high demand by state industries.

The Department of Labor (DOL) announced that it will award $450 million in job-driven training grants to nearly 270 community colleges across the country via the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) competitive grant program, which is co-administered by the DOL and Department of Education. The awards are to support community college-industry partnerships that will expand and improve education and career training programs offered at community colleges across the country.

Although black women may show more interest in STEM majors than white women as they enter college, they are less likely to earn a degree in those fields according to new research in Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology.

The U.S. Small Business Administration has announced four new Regional Innovation Clusters that will be included among its portfolio of high-performing regional networks. Awardee clusters will receive $500,000-$550,000 for mentoring, counseling, pitch development and other small business support programs. The new members of SBA’s cluster portfolio include Milwaukee’s Water Technology Cluster, Southeastern New Mexico’s Autonomous and Unmanned Systems Cluster, a Retail, Supply Chain and Food Processing Cluster spanning the Ozarks region and a Marine Industries Cluster in several Gulf Coast states.

After decades of seeing their suburbs thrive while their cores decayed, cities across the United States  are receiving a long overdue influx of talent and capital in what Alan Ehrenhalt describes as the “great inversion.” While a large proportion of wealth and population in many regions still lives in the suburbs, trends are shifting, and it’s not just anecdotal.

Each year, the first Friday in October marks Manufacturing Day, a quasi-holiday where manufacturers nationwide open their doors to host open houses, tours, workshops, and other events to educate the public on the current state of American manufacturing. Although the phrase “American manufacturing” may conjure up images of oversized equipment or Rust Belt decay, the industry is, by many accounts, thriving. One of the highlights of this year’s Manufacturing Day was Jay Williams, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development’s announcement of a nearly $1.9 million EDA grant to Wichita State University in South Kansas to support advanced manufacturing, fueling the creation of 500 jobs and providing competitive advantage to the region’s transportation equipment manufacturing industry.

In celebration of National Manufacturing Day, the Obama Administration announced it will release a new competition to award more than $100 million to launch a new Institute for Manufacturing Innovation (IMI) focused on Integrated Photonics. The proposed Integrated Photonics Institute will assist in developing an end-to-end photonics ‘ecosystem’ in the U.S. and support research and development efforts across the country on domestic foundry access, integrated design tools, automated packaging, assembly and test, and workforce development in the research area related to photonics.

The Department of Defense’s (DOD) SBIR program is meeting three of its four legislative/mission-related goals, according to new study from the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies – SBIR at the Department of Defense. Those four congressional objectives of the DOD SBIR program are to:

If a concentration of highly skilled workers is an important leading indicator to more widespread economic growth, which regions are leading the way? Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to compare the educational attainment rates of the nation’s largest labor forces from 2005 to 2013, authors from the Cleveland State University Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs determine where America’s highest-skilled jobs are clustering.

North Carolina’s new Economic Development Partnership began operations this week. The public-private partnership will assume many of the economic development operations of the state’s Department of Commerce (as described in an earlier Digest article), with most of its 34 staff members previously working for the department, according to the News & Observer.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has released the names of the 27 individuals who will serve as the initial members of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE). NACIE, which will begin work in December, will advise the secretary of Commerce on transformational policies to help communities, businesses and the American workforce become more globally competitive. Subcommittees will explore the council’s three main focus areas: entrepreneurship, innovation and job-driven skills training.