• Join your peers at SSTI's 2024 Annual Conference!

    Join us December 10-12 in Arizona to connect with and learn from your peers working around the country to strengthen their regional innovation economies. Visit ssticonference.org for more information and to register today.

  • Become an SSTI Member

    As the most comprehensive resource available for those involved in technology-based economic development, SSTI offers the services that are needed to help build tech-based economies.  Learn more about membership...

  • Subscribe to the SSTI Weekly Digest

    Each week, the SSTI Weekly Digest delivers the latest breaking news and expert analysis of critical issues affecting the tech-based economic development community. Subscribe today!

Iowa's Innovation Council Strategic Plan Asks to Go Nonprofit

January 19, 2011

The Iowa Innovation Council, a 29-member state advisory board, released a strategic plan focused on entrepreneurship and targeted industries (e.g., advanced manufacturing, biosciences and information technology) to grow the state's innovation economy. The council believes this plan will create high-skilled, high-wage jobs through several new initiatives including:

  • A private seed capital investment fund;
  • New strategies to accelerate technology transfer and commercialization; and,
  • Expansion of services available to businesses including a source for best practices and standardized due diligence processes.

 

Ted Crosbie, chairperson of the council stated, "The strategic plan signals the start of an integrated effort to move Iowa's innovation economy forward. Innovation is what will help Iowa's economy stay competitive in the global marketplace." The council also is asking the state Legislature for permission to become a nonprofit organization. The council contends this transformation would be beneficial because it allows them to have more "operational flexibility and the ability to raise private funds". Read the press release ...

Iowa