SSTI Digest

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

The Chronicle of Higher Education annually provides in its Almanac an accessible state-by-state snapshot of a variety of statistics useful in measuring the magnitude and health of higher education. The 2002-2003 Almanac of Higher Education, released recently in print and online, is no exception. For example, figures are provided for college enrollment trends, demographics, faculty pay, tuition and fees, state appropriations, expenditures, R&D, state spending on student aid, and federal funds for academic research.

Yes, only 10 open seats remain for SSTI’s 7th Annual Conference, Building Tech-based Economies: From Policy to Practice. With nearly three weeks remaining before the October 21-22 event in Seattle, SSTI anticipates it will have to close registration in the coming days based on the phenomenal response to this year’s great slate of 24 breakout sessions, great plenary sessions and wonderful location. If you are planning to attend, we encourage you to register as soon as possible.

Appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have emerged out of the conference committee for consideration and final approval by Congress — one of three budget bills likely to be passed before the fiscal year ends next Tuesday.

Demonstrating anything can happen during the conference between the two chambers, the final budget for the Science and Technology Directorate came out higher than either the Senate or House had approved in separate versions of the DHS appropriations bill. The Directorate, responsible for DHS research activities, is poised to receive $918 million, $7 million above the House level and $52 million above the Senate budget. The majority of the change, however, is relocating nearly $40 million in administration and management expenses to fall within the Directorate.

The President wants $87 billion for the war in Iraq. Congress is looking at a month-long continuing resolution for the budget since final approval on most appropriation bills is at least that far in the future. Meanwhile, the persistence of the recession, the restructuring of U.S. manufacturing due in part to globalization, and the continued hemorrhaging of tax revenues has led several governors, state legislatures and community leaders to begin rethinking their economic development strategies. The past few months have seen a spate of state and local news on summits, plans and new groups for reorganizing, revamping, recreating or re-energizing public-private economic development efforts.  Below are examples of some of the approaches.

Study Hints at Why TBED Is Good National Investment

Much can be made about the spillover benefits of having a strong research university or cluster of similar technology companies locally. As a result many research institutions and technology-based economic development (TBED) professionals support the creation of endowed chairs and centers of excellence to lure top researchers, hoping for long-term economic benefits from the investment. The heightened interest that most states and universities have placed on becoming a biotech leader, for example, has many policy analysts expecting the end result will simply be to increase the asking price of the top life science researchers.

More than 700 of America's institutions of higher education couldn't claim to be vegetarian based on the record amount of pork they ate from the 2003 federal budget, according to the cover story of this week's Chronicle of Higher Education. The dollar value of college earmarks reached a record $2.013 billion in the current fiscal year's budget, 10 percent more than the previous high mark of $1.837 billion captured in FY 2002. The Chronicle reports the siphoned wealth was spread to 7 percent more schools in FY 2003 through 19 percent more earmarks.

Earmarks for Congress's pet projects have exploded over the past three years — at the same time the federal budget has faced expanding deficits and Congress has called for universities to control spending. Academic pork has doubled since the $1.04 billion posted in FY 2000, while the number of individual earmarks has grown 2.5 times higher from 777 to 1,964.