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The Economic Development Administration (EDA) released the Federal Funding Opportunity (FFO) and began accepting applications for the 2016 round of Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) Program funding. In this round of funding, the EDA has made $15 million in federal funding available to create and expand cluster-focused proof-of-concept and commercialization programs and early stage seed capital funds through the i6 Challenge and the Seed Fund Support (SFS) Grant competition, respectively. Managed by EDA’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE), EDA has made $13 million available for i6 Challenge grants and $2 million available for SFS grants. The deadline for the 2016 RIS FFO is 11:59 P.M. ET on June 24.

SSTI is excited to announce the 2016 SSTI Excellence in TBED awards program. For the last nine years, SSTI has recognized initiatives that greatly impact state and regional economies a national competition showcasing effective and innovative approaches to building tech-based economies. To mark the program’s 10th anniversary, we will be announcing several changes to the program the next couple weeks – so stay tuned!

In this week’s Digest, we wanted to highlight several of the key dates for the 2016 competition:

Last summer, SSTI and JumpStart Inc. conducted a survey of tech-based economic development (TBED) organizations on how groups use and invest in information technology tools. The goal of this survey was to gather a greater understanding of the basic challenges TBED organizations face with regard to information technology, as well as their self-identified strategic goals and whether they believe their IT spending priorities are helping them achieve these goals.

On March 1, 1996, the first edition of the SSTI Digest was sent to a select group of fewer than 60 state tech-based economic development leaders. The original subscribers received the Digest via fax every Friday because Sprint offered unlimited, free calls and faxes each Friday. Since these early days, the Digest has grown to thousands of subscribers from across the country as well as hundreds of subscribers from several countries.

Overwhelming majorities of voters across the nation and in key swing states support a comprehensive initiative designed to parlay the United States’ strong research base into greater economic prosperity and a higher quality of life for all. These findings come from a new survey conducted for the Innovation Advocacy Council, an initiative of SSTI, by the bipartisan team of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and TargetPoint Consulting.

Finding private-sector champions, building strong mentor networks, and creating organizational flexibility rank among the most critical elements of success, according to leaders of the 2014 Excellence in TBED award recipients. Expert insights on how these and other issues can be addressed are found in the latest SSTI Awards podcast series.

Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced the launch of the Economic Development Administration's (EDA) 2015 Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) Program competition to spur innovation capacity-building activities in regions across the nation. Under the 2015 announcement, SBA will commit $10 million for two funding opportunities.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced that it will commit up to $125 million for its 2015 OPEN competition to Support R&D projects on potentially disruptive new energy technologies. Applications should be able to address how the proposed technology will be able to make a significant impact in one of the three mission areas of ARPA-E – to reduce imported energy, to reduce energy-related emissions, and to improve energy efficiency.

Included in the continuing resolution/omnibus spending bill for FY15 is $10 million for the Regional Innovation program. The Regional Innovation Program was authorized under the American COMPETES Act and is designed to provide funding to support regional innovation activities. The program received its first funding of $10 million in FY14 after extensive work on the Hill by SSTI, its members and others.