SSTI Digest

Dan Lohymeyer has stepped down as president of Ohio's IT Alliance.

Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology has promoted Dan Mills to vice president for regional operations.

The new executive director of the Center for Regional Economic Issues is Edward Morrison.

Paul Ray has left his position as director of the Colorado Office of Life Sciences and Biotechnology.

The Modernization Forum seeks qualified candidates to serve as a project manager for a one-year position. The manager will plan, staff and facilitate research involving focus groups, phone and mail surveys, and secondary resources related to small manufacturing and the economy. The manager will work in collaboration with contracting organization as part of a highly qualified research team. The manager also will work with the president of the association to develop proposals for members to deliver specialized services to small manufacturing sectors. Reporting directly to the ModForum president, the manager will serve in this position for one year pending continuation of research projects and location of the ModForum office. The nonprofit organization is currently located in Livonia, MI. A more complete description is available on the SSTI Job Corner: http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm Responses should be submitted no later than November 1, 2003 to: Project Manager, The Modernization Forum, 38777 West Six Mile Road, Suite 211, Livonia, MI, 48152.  More information about the ModForum…

The SSTI Weekly Digest and Funding Supplement will resume publicaton October 31 as the office will be closed to attend SSTI's 7th Annual Conference, Building Tech-based Economies: From Policies to Practice, on Oct. 20-22. For those readers fearing withdrawal symptoms, you can still get more than your weekly fix by perusing the Digest and Funding Supplement archives on the SSTI website: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/digest.htm

Within the last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a slew of awards – 128 in all – for rural tech-based economic development initiatives. Collectively, the awards total $53.7 million, including: 84 Distance Learning and Telemedicine grants for a total of $32.4 million, providing greater educational opportunities and medical service to rural citizens in 41 states. The education projects will help 556 schools provide students with educational tools to better equip them for the global digital economy. Additionally, rural residents will have access to better, faster and more modern health care through 190 medical service facilities. 34 broadband community grants across 20 states totaling $11.3 million. The grants are expected to enable more residents to access the Internet. Communities selected do not have access to broadband connectivity for the essential services of police and fire protection, hospitals, libraries and schools. In return for receiving a grant, the communities will provide residents with computer and Internet access. The grant program…

New Jersey is launching a new program to stimulate new investment, business growth and job creation in the biotechnology and life sciences industries through a special fund to be established through the Business Employment Incentive Program (BEIP). The $10 million Biotech/Life Sciences Venture Fund, to be administered by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA), will be created out of proceeds generated from an estimated $50 million BEIP bond issue. The state plans to issue the remaining $40 million in November. EDA already manages the $10 million New Jersey Technology Council Venture Fund, which also supports start-up technology companies. Under BEIP, program recipients receive a grant award for up to 80 percent of the income tax payments paid to the state on behalf of the eligible new jobs. The remaining 20-plus percent is considered the "residual" benefit to the state and will be leveraged to create special funds, the first one being the Biotech/Life Sciences Venture Fund. New Jersey State Treasurer John McCormac said that state grants and loans provided…

To transform the nation’s medical research capabilities and speed the movement of research discoveries from the bench to the bedside, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) laid out on Monday a series of initiatives collectively known as the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. Developed with input from more than 300 leaders in academia, industry, government and the public, the NIH Roadmap provides a framework of the strategic investments NIH needs to make to optimize its research portfolio. The NIH Roadmap builds on the progress in medical research achieved, in part, through the recent doubling of the NIH budget. In setting forth a vision for a more efficient and productive system of medical research, the NIH Roadmap focuses on opportunities in three main areas — new pathways to discovery, research teams of the future and re-engineering the clinical research enterprise. The three areas are comprised of 28 initiatives to be carried out by nine implementation groups: Building Blocks, Pathways and Networks; Molecular Libraries and Imaging; Structural Biology;…

Secures State as Pilot Site for FastTrac™ Coming soon to an island near you — business development services. That could be the sales pitch for a new development within the High Technology Development Corporation (HTDC), Hawaii's lead tech-based economic development agency. HTDC launched last week a statewide incubation services program designed to give incubation tenants and non-tenants access to business development services, strategic partnerships, networking and marketing opportunities, shared support services, and business mentoring. Prior to launching its new program, HTDC's incubation services were limited to tenants at its Manoa Innovation Center on Oahu and its Maui Research & Technology Center on Maui. The expanded program brings services to technology start-ups on the Big Island and Kauai. External groups such as the University of Hawaii-Hilo are expected to partner with HTDC to strengthen the new program. UH-Hilo has signed on with a $3 million commitment, the Honolulu Advertiser reported last week. Additional funding will be derived from state and federal…

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius made public on Wednesday the details of a statewide economic revitalization plan designed to stimulate and strengthen the Kansas economy. Included in the plan are several items that could help boost tech-based economic development (TBED) in the state: Kansas Business Incentive Program. The program would use a flexible and innovative approach to distribute tax credits to businesses expanding or locating in Kansas. It also would use a sliding scale of incentives based on project quality and taking into account regional economies. Rural Development Tax Credits. The tax credits would create regional pools of venture capital to assist entrepreneurs and fledgling businesses in rural areas and would be issued to regional foundations. The foundations could then sell the credits to raise money for their regional venture capital pools. Training Centers of Excellence. These centers would specialize in particular educational areas of expertise. Also, an integrated workforce system would include the Kansas Department of Commerce, the Kansas Department of Human…

Policy measures aimed at the development of clusters must take into account which development stage the cluster is currently in. One of the central processes involved in cluster development is that of firm foundings, states Co-Development of Firm Foundings and Regional Clusters, a working paper written by Dirk Fornahl and Max-Peter Menzel. Firm foundings and regional clusters generally have received much attention, but little work has been done to analyze the relationship between these two processes until now. Fornahl and Menzel's paper focuses on the growth of firm foundings and the development of clusters simultaneously within the different stages and the impact they have on regional development. Four stages in the cluster development progression are outlined by Fornahl and Menzel. Each of these stages reveals a different relationship between cluster development and firm foundings. The first stage is that of emerging clusters, which may have few effects on firm foundings because the necessary infrastructure may not yet be in place. However, the firm foundings can have a significant impact on…