SSTI is excited to announce we are partnering with the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation to bring you and approximately 300 of your peers to Providence on Sep 9-11 for SSTI’s 2019 Annual Conference. Please hold the date on your calendar – or better yet – go ahead and register now to obtain the lowest possible prices for attendance!

The budget that Congress ultimately passes for FY 2020 will almost certainly bear little resemblance to the President’s “Budget for a Better America: Promises Kept. Taxpayers First.” For example, the White House is requesting again to eliminate EDA and to reduce R&D significantly, despite Congress increasing funding for these activities less than a month ago. Nonetheless, Congress will grapple with a set of issues, such as budget caps and Census funding, that may squeeze the funding available for SSTI members’ priorities. A lot more than a rejection of the White House’s budget needs to happen for science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship funding to even hold steady let alone increase in FY 2020.

The circular economy, a phrase meant to redefine economic growth beyond the current “take-make-waste” extractive industrial model, is gaining attention around the world as a way to produce more positive environmental and social benefits. Over the past few months, three cities have announced efforts to promote circular economy startups. In New York City, a contest will offer a $500,000 prize to the best idea and business plan that seeks to repurpose the city’s recyclables and manufacture a product to sell to the local market. The City of Phoenix and Arizona State University announced four companies will participate in an incubator affiliated with the Resource Innovation and Solutions Network (RISN). Last fall, public sector partners and the university-based Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) collaborated to launch a new Circular Economy Incubator in the region.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has released a working paper that establishes connections between opioid prescription rates and employment rates. The authors use longitudinal data, as well as leveraging the Great Recession as a sort of natural experiment, to provide evidence that opioids not only relate to declining labor force participation, but have likely caused this outcome.

Research and development (R&D) expenditures at federally funded R&D centers (FFRDCs) increased for the fourth consecutive year in FY 2017, eclipsing $20 billion, according to new data from the National Science Foundation. FFRDCs are privately operated R&D organizations that are substantially financed by the federal government. The FFRDCs that performed the most R&D in 2017 were DOE’s Sandia National Lab, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and DOE’s Los Alamos National Lab. From FY 2016 to FY 2017, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, based in Pasadena, CA, experienced the largest increase in R&D expenditures, rising 25.5 percent to $2.3 billion.  In honor of pie day, the chart below shows the distribution of R&D at FFRDC’s by each administrator type.

A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showed that women’s increased participation in the labor force has not led to a correspondingly greater participation of women in the highest executive positions at the organizations where they work. In fact, the study showed that women are significantly less likely to lead U.S. businesses than men are, and that this share has remained largely unchanged over the 2000-2014 period.

TEDCO’s current portfolio of assisted companies has grown to 326 companies and more than 3,100 jobs, according to an economic impact report by the University of Baltimore’s Jacob France Institute and TEConomy Partners. TEDCO was created by the Maryland State Legislature in 1998 to facilitate the transfer and commercialization of technology from Maryland’s research universities and federal labs into the marketplace. The direct Maryland economic activity generated by these core programs totaled nearly $900 million in 2018, a considerable increase from the $572.3 million in economic activity reported in 2015. Of all TEDCO programs, the Seed Investment Fund has the largest direct impact, accounting for more than half of all employment and direct economic activity.