Southern Innovation Index Tracks Innovation, Entrepreneurship in South

The Southern Innovation Index, a strategic plan created with the governments of 13 Southern states and Puerto Rico to promote innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth in the South, has been released by the Southern Growth Policies Board, a bipartisan public policy group based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

The index identifies 56 benchmarks and 10-year targets for each of the Southern Growth member states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the commonwealth of Puerto Rico — to track the progress of technology and innovation initiatives in the region. It includes state-by-state data and summaries relative to the publication's primary goals:

• Creating a culture of learning throughout the South, in which the acquisition, creation and application of knowledge is viewed as central to health, happiness and prosperity; and,
• Encouraging and supporting innovation and entrepreneurship.

Several benchmarks and targets included in The Southern Innovation Index track the region's progress in performing research and development (R&D) in the industrial, university and government sectors. The index also contains an analysis of the region's R&D share in the last four decades, drawing on data from the National Science Foundation.

While the South's share of both federal and university R&D steadily increased in 30 years, the index shows, the region experienced a decline in industrially-performed R&D share during the same time period. Industry-performed R&D is the largest of the three R&D categories, accounting for more than 75 percent of the nation's total R&D.

A long-term initiative of the Southern Growth Policies Board and the Southern Technology Council (STC), The Southern Innovation Index is the third installment in a series of Invented Here reports. Invented Here: Transforming the Southern Economy, released in 2001, provided the groundwork for setting state goals and benchmarks. Subsequent to the release of the report, The Southern Innovation Index will become an on-line database that can be updated regularly.

For a full copy of the report, contact Leigh Ann Wilder, at lwilder@southern.org.