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Study Highlights Nebraska’s Position in S&T

September 19, 2003

Investments in science and technology (S&T) – from higher education to industry research and development (R&D) – are the decisive factors in creating a sustainable economic future, a new study finds.

The report compares Nebraska with its regional peers and its position relative to national leaders using the Milken Institute’s Technology and Science Index. Seventy-seven indicators in five categories – R&D inputs, risk capital and entrepreneurial infrastructure, human capital investment, technology and science workforce, and technology concentration and dynamism – are used to measure how well Nebraska will perform in a knowledge-based economy. Individual indicators include a variety of measurements such as the percentage of a state’s population with Ph.D.s, R&D expenditures per capita and venture capital investment.

Nebraska’s best performance was in the study's Research and Development Composite Index, where the state had strong positions in industry R&D, academic R&D, life sciences R&D and agriculture R&D, and in the Technology and Science Workforce Composite Index, ranking 11th nationally and first among the West North Central states. Nebraska also demonstrated exceptionally strong growth in venture capital funding, increasing at a rate of slightly more than 100 percent in the past year.

However, Nebraska’s middle-of-the-road rankings in the remaining three indices place the state almost dead-center nationally, according to the study.

“Focus must be placed on improving commercialization rates out of universities and adjusting the rewards to encourage entrepreneurial activities,” the report states. Nebraska’s S&T workforce, it adds, could be better leveraged in starting tech firms.

In conducting the research, Milken Institute economists found a strong connection between S&T investment and personal income gains, as well as overall state economic growth. A region’s economic prosperity is based upon its ability to attract and expand S&T assets, then leverage them for economic development, the report concludes.

“More than three-fourths of personal income growth can be tied to increases in technology output,” says Ross DeVol, Director of Regional Economics for Milken. “States succeeding in technology-based growth will push income per capita higher.”

The Nebraska study is available at http://www.milkeninstitute.org/.

Nebraska