SSTI Digest

Joe Alviani has resigned as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to accept a position in the private sector. MTC Executive Vice President Philip Holahan is serving as Interim Executive Director.

Editor's Note: The fifth installment in our review of the Governors' inaugural addresses, state of the state addresses, and budget messages for 2001. The first four articles in the series were over the past four weeks. Those issues of the SSTI Weekly Digest and all other previous editions are available on our website: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/2001/headlines01.htm

It is widely argued in the tech-based economic development community that New Economy businesses, specifically computers and information technology, account for the tremendous economic growth of the last half of the 1990s. But does the data support this?

Many tech-based economic development programs recognize the importance of having seed and venture capital accessible to their start up tech firms and entrepreneurs. Some practitioners, though, see a challenge in encouraging equity investment in more conservative, risk adverse regions and localities. The dot-com “correction” of last year probably did not help.

Using patent filing and quality as a measure of innovation, “a dollar of venture capital appears to be about three times more potent in stimulating patenting than a dollar of traditional corporate R&D,” according to a July 2000 paper by Samuel Korton (Boston University) and Josh Lerner (Harvard University). The authors report in Assessing the Contribution of Venture Capital to Innovation that, although venture capital averaged less than three percent of corporate R&D from 1983-1992, it was responsible for almost eight percent of US industrial innovations during the same time period. 

The July-August issue of Technology Review, MIT's Magazine of Innovation, includes a special report on university research. The TR University Research Scorecard, written by TR associate editor Rebecca Zacks, ranks the top U.S. universities for their performance in patent quality (called "technological strength") and licensing revenues.

On April 19, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court cleared the way for the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust Fund to begin operations with a unanimous ruling that the funding mechanism is constitutional. Between 1998 and 2003, the Trust, managed by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, will receive about $150 million to accelerate the use of cleaner sources of electricity and to invest in the development of the renewable energy industry in Massachusetts. In subsequent years, the Trust will receive about $20 million a year.

President Clinton has announced his nomination of Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus to serve as Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy. Dr. Dresselhaus is currently a professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Established in 1978 and entirely self-supported beginning in 1988, the Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation (MTDC) has one of the longest records of success for state-sponsored venture capital corporations. SSTI has completed an eight-page profile of MTDC as the fourth in an occasional series examining the diversity of approaches to technology-based economic development.

Efforts to transform rural Berkshire County, Massachusetts from an area of economic decline into an equal player for the New Economy through improved telecommunications access are bearing fruit. Berkshire Connect, a consortium of business, cultural, academic, and community leaders has successfully negotiated an agreement with Global Crossing, Ltd. and Equal Access Networks to provide low-cost, equal access telecommunications throughout the region. This agreement will allow area businesses to save 50% over their current rates for T-1 Internet access.

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) has released its third annual Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy. The report tracks and explores the implications of 30 performance indicators on the long-term growth and stability of the Massachusetts economy. When statistics are available, Massachusetts is compared to its “leading competitor states” of California, Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Texas.

Curious who will shape technological innovation in 21st century? Technology Review magazine has developed for the first time a list of the top 100 innovators under the age of 35.



The list, nicknamed the TR100, was compiled by a panel of 24 judges including 3 Nobel laureates, 2 university presidents, and representatives of scientific and research organizations, businesses, venture capitalists, and the media.



Apart from who the TR100 are and their expertise, the project led the panel judges and Technology Review writers to recognize two emerging themes: the increasing scale of technology collaborations and the growing ease with which innovators move between academia and the private sector. Both trends tie in closely with many of the activities or aspirations of state science and technology programs. In many cases for the TR 100, the traditional role of university-industry partnerships have evolved into more fluid and much more dynamic relationships than those of recent history. Creating environments within academic institutions, nonprofit research organizations, and federal laboratories that foster the relationships nurturing the TR100 is proving to be a worthwhile endeavor for all parties.



Short pieces describing each theme as well as profiles of each of the TR100 can be found on the Technology Review website: http://www.techreview.com/tr100/index.html