r&d

While President Biden’s infrastructure proposal with heavy investments in science, technology and innovation garnered most of the press attention in the last week, a number of other developments occurred in or impacting federal policy, including:

Metropolitan areas in the U.S. with fewer than 370,000 residents are more likely to be more economically reliant on R&D performed by colleges and universities than larger metros, according to new SSTI analysis. Three data points are used to consider how R&D at institutions of higher education is impacting a region’s economy: NSF’s Higher Education R&D (HERD) data on expenditures at individual institutions; metro area Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis; and population estimates from the Census Bureau.

Given higher education’s role in generating the knowledge that catalyzes innovative new technologies developed by high-growth startups, R&D conducted at institutions of higher education is one of the most important metrics for evaluating an area’s innovation economy. This edition of Useful Stats examines NSF’s recently updated Higher Education R&D (HERD) survey, finding that most states, although not all, experienced growth in HERD expenditures from 2018 to 2019.

Industry investment in research and development (R&D) indicates, literally, how invested each state’s businesses are in creating new products and processes. To better-understand industry’s commitment to innovation, business R&D can be viewed as a percentage of each state’s private sector gross domestic product (GDP), providing a measure of research intensity. This measure highlights substantial differences in the orientation of states’ businesses toward research, with some states seeing an investment rate of less than 1 percent while others are above 5 percent.

In the wake of the Great Recession, Congress enacted the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 to curb federal discretionary spending as the nation approached the statutory debt limit. Originally intended to reduce spending by nearly $2 trillion over the period from FY 2012 through FY 2021, the BCA spending caps were periodically raised by Congress.

A thriving innovation economy requires a robust R&D enterprise — with participation by academia, government, and the private sector. As a substantial performer and funder of R&D in the United States, the strength of private industry’s R&D activity in a region can provide an indication of the region’s capacity for bringing innovative technologies to market.

Stemming from a collaboration between the Census Bureau and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science Foundation (NSF), a new data set aims to untangle the dynamics of research and development (R&D) performed by private companies.

The United States is currently ranked tenth in research and development intensity (a measure of R&D investment as a percent of a nation’s Gross Domestic Product) but has continued to lead the pack in total research and development spending, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently published A Snapshot of U.S.

With the general election less than one month away, SSTI has reviewed the 120 state ballot initiatives throughout the country for innovation-related issues. Education, gig workers, redistricting and issues surrounding elections and state budgets are scattered across the country and can affect the future of innovation through funding, talent and political will. Read below for coverage on the initiatives that could have an impact on different segments of the economy and the future of innovation.

At a time that is often referred to as “The Age of Technology,” the U.S. has no coherent strategy for maintaining its high standing as a world leader in science, technology and innovation, and has watched as China has overtaken the country on many indicators of prowess in R&D and innovation.