SSTI Digest

UK Moves to Support Growing Social Innovation Sector
The United Kingdom (UK) recently announced that it will petition the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, for permission to increase the size of tax relief for social investments that address significant social issues. The proposed plan would:

Ontario officials launched a new fund-of-funds this week intended to boost capital resources for high-tech companies. The Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund is a privately led initiative, supported by federal and provincial funds. The governments of Canada and Ontario have agreed to make a combined capital commitment of $1 for every $2 secured from the private sector. Current commitments total $217.5 million CAD ($195.4 million USD), but leaders hope to match the government’s maximum match level of $300 million CAD ($269.6 million USD) in a second closing later this year. Read the announcement…

In the face of the spiraling unemployment in Greece and Spain, the European Union (EU) received encouraging news regarding the economic recovery of firms across its 27-member states. According to the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, European firms reported increased R&D investment (8.9 percent nominal growth), sales (4.9 percent nominal growth) and profits (3.5 percent nominal growth) for the second straight year in 2011. The 8.9 percent growth in R&D investments by European firms puts them above world average and similar than that of U.S. firms (9.0 percent). However, U.S.-based firms continue to perform better than EU-based firms in terms of sales growth (12.3 percent for U.S. firms versus 4.9 percent for EU firms) and profits growth (12.4 percent for U.S. firms versus 3.5 percent for EU firms). These numbers are particularly encouraging for the EU only two years after reporting negative growth in Industrial R&D investment in 2008 and a continuation of adverse market conditions and uncertainties due to the persistent effects of the crisis including the potential collapse of the Spanish and Greek economies.

Governments of advanced economies are starting to believe as the 21st century advances significant opportunities for their technology-based product and service sectors will emerge from increasingly open, competitive and affluent global markets. To compete in this changing world, they are looking to expand access to capital for startups and entrepreneurs, support their research and development (R&D) infrastructure and address weaknesses in their national economies. Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) are among those that recently have announced initiatives or released reports intended to strength their national innovation economy.

As global economies shift, developing nations are attempting to transition as suppliers of raw materials to nations that are producers of value-added goods. Africa has been a major supplier of raw materials to the developed world. However, it drastically lagged behind in the production of valued-added goods. Recently, African nations have attempted to reinvent their economic development efforts from suppliers to producers by developing programs to grow tech-based economies. Two recent initiatives, the LIONS@FRICA Partnership and South Africa's manufacturing incentives program, highlight the changing attitudes on the continent. In addition, a new survey of European business leaders found discouraging results relative to European Union policies to improve innovation.

The European Union (EU) launched the Technology Transfer Offices — Connecting Innovation and Research Centers and Laboratories in Europe (European TTO CIRCLE ), a network of tech transfer offices at Europe's 25 largest public research organizations. With the goal of increasing the market and societal impacts of publicly-funded research, the European TTO CIRCLE members already have adopted a set of several initiatives including:

MaRS Discovery District, Toronto's innovation and entrepreneurship center, has launched a $30 million early stage clean tech fund, the first of its kind in Canada. This week, the group announced that it had raised its fundraising goal entirely from private sources, and that released information about its first two investments. The MaRS Cleantech Fund LP portfolio companies will be encouraged to seek maximum support from MaRS. Read the announcement... Interested in how U.S. states and regions are catalyzing clean tech innovation? Join Lewis Milford of the Clean Energy Group, Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution and Matthew Stepp of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on April 19 for a webinar to learn about how the energy debate is resulting in new policies and programs and the local level. Read about SSTI webinars...