SSTI Digest

As covered in the last Weekly Digest, the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship held a hearing on reauthorizing SBA’s innovation programs. SSTI was invited to add to the hearing’s record, and our letter supporting SBIR/STTR pilot programs, FAST and entrepreneurial development programs is produced, below.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) recently released FY 2019 announcements for the Growth Accelerator Fund Competition and Federal and State Technology Partnership Program (FAST) funding. Accelerators emphasizing underserved entrepreneurs can submit a brief application and slide deck from June 10-20; SBA anticipates as many as 60, $50,000 awards. FAST provides a funding match for programs supporting SBIR/STTR outreach and support services; the program is limited to one, governor-supported application per state, so interested parties should begin considering their application well ahead of the June 28 deadline. SSTI will be hosting a free webinar on June 5 at 3 p.m. EDT, in which SBA staff will discuss the two funding opportunities: register today.

Scarcity and systems issues on a biosphere level (ocean warming, acidification, deforestation, CO2 levels, etc.) aren’t the only reasons some people are beginning to have their doubts on whether capitalism is up to the challenges the world is facing. Some are wondering if the very success of our dominant economic model isn’t reaching limits of propriety of its own making.  A growing number of this community, including some among the well-to-do, are beginning to wonder aloud what’s next? What comes after capitalism? The latest example of the uncomfortable irony of this discussion among elites playing out in real time could be found during the two-day community development research conference convened last week by one of the most conservative bastions of the American economic structure: the Federal Reserve System. A biennial event bringing together researchers from the Federal Reserve and academia with policy makers and practitioners in community, workforce and economic development to discuss findings around a particular theme, this year’s conference focused on “Renewing the Promise of the Middle Class.”    …

Eight U. S. senators introduced a bill last week, endorsed by SSTI and more than two dozen organizations, that would provide performing Manufacturing USA centers with a path for continued federal support, while also better-incorporating the centers into other manufacturing and innovation resources around the country. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) represent a bipartisan coalition that is well-positioned to support the legislation through the U. S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The full text of the bill can be found here.

The Senate Small Business Committee held a hearing yesterday on “Reauthorization of the SBA’s Innovation Programs,” which had a heavy emphasis on SBIR/STTR. Earlier in the day, Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) published a report on business investment, which places many shortcomings of the national economy at the feet of “sharedholder primacy” and calls for policies to incentivize investment by businesses into research and innovation. Among the topics raised during the hearing were making SBIR/STTR permanent, faster contracting, and additional support for innovative companies.

Although North Dakota’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has declined since 2013, the energy boom in earlier years gave the state the fastest increase over the past 10- and 20-year periods, according to an SSTI analysis of recently updated state GDP data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Beyond North Dakota, the 10 years from 2008 to 2018 benefitted per capita GDP in states with a prominent knowledge economy, led by New York, California, Washington and Massachusetts. In general, per-capita gross product serves as a useful metric because it can show a state’s relative economic performance against its peers and over time. This article examines state GDP per capita over the past 20 years.* During each year from 1998 to 2018, Washington, D.C., had, by far, the highest levels of GDP per capita, reaching $176,534 in 2018. States ranking the highest for GDP per capita in 2018 include New York ($73,531 per person), Massachusetts ($72,653), and Alaska ($70,936). The map below shows GDP per capita by state for 2018, as well as changes over the one-, five-, 10-, and 20-year periods. From 1998 to 2018, GDP per capita increased the most in…

While the U.S. continues to lead the world in science, technology and innovation, other nations are on track to catch and surpass the lead the country currently holds, according to a new report from the Task Force on American Innovation (TFIA). In Second Place America? Increasing Challenges to U.S. Scientific Leadership, TFIA, a non-partisan alliance of leading American companies and business associations, research university associations, and scientific societies, benchmarks the U.S. against other nations in R&D investment, knowledge production, education, workforce and high-tech sectors of the economy. The report holds that to maintain a global leadership status, which it calls critical to national security and future economic growth and prosperity, a renewed national commitment to invest in key federal science agencies such as NSF, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, NASA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology is necessary. The authors demonstrate that the U.S. share of global R&D is diminishing while other nations, and China in particular, surge ahead. The report lays out international R&D investment…

The Fung Institute at the University of California Berkeley, with funding support from the National Science Foundation, has established a website to serve as a centralized hub for finding research papers, analyses, and case studies on science and innovation policy. Papers to be included may develop models, analytical tools, data, and metrics to enable science and innovation policymakers and TBED practitioners to improve the impacts derived from public investments and policy interventions.  Research papers are sorted by five categories: business, economics, policy, science, and technology. Site visitors also can find works by investigator, tags, affiliated organization, publication status, and key word.  Information for submitting materials to help populate the hub are available on the homepage of the site: https://sih.berkeley.edu/ Economic Development Quarterly (EDQ) is seeking research manuscript proposals that will contribute to the understanding of the economic challenges and opportunities facing rural areas.  Authors of the selected proposals will be invited to share their complete research findings at a two-day conference hosted by the Federal…

More than one-in-five jobs across America’s metropolitan areas are defined as opportunity occupations, those that pay above the national annual median wage and are accessible to workers without a bachelor’s degree, according to new research from authors at the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia and Cleveland.  In Opportunity Occupations Revisited: Exploring Employment for Sub-baccalaureate Workers Across Metro Areas and Over Time, authors Kyle Fee and Lisa Nelson from the Cleveland Fed and Keith Wardrip from the Philadelphia Fed reexamine findings from a 2015 study. This update offers an in-depth analysis of the largest metropolitan areas across the country, finding that a region’s occupational mix and cost of living play a significant role in determining their share of opportunity employment. Among the 121 metropolitan areas analyzed, the regions with the highest share of employment in opportunity occupations were Toledo (34.0 percent of jobs), Anchorage (31.5 percent of jobs), and Des Moines (30.8 percent of jobs). Opportunity employment was half as common in some of the country’s most expensive metropolitan areas, such as Washington, D.…

The Washington legislature passed a higher education bill that is awaiting the governor’s signature that would provide more aid for state residents attending higher education institutions in the state. The bill could raise nearly $1 billion over four years through an increase in the state’s business and occupation tax. The new legislation differs from other tuition assistance programs in states like New York or Tennessee in that it allows any qualifying state resident who does not already have a bachelor’s degree to earn something less than a full degree at a community college, allows students to go part-time, and covers apprenticeships. The bill notes that the state is expecting 740,000 job openings by 2021 that will require a post-secondary credential. Currently only 40 percent of the state’s high school students earn such a credential by age 26, while 70 percent is the goal set by industry and business leaders and notes that providing additional resources  for workforce investment is critical in maintaining the state’s competitiveness. The student aid will be funded through the newly created Workforce Education Investment Account.…

Software plays an increasingly large role in private sector research and development (R&D) expenditures, according to new research from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Based on a recent change in how the BEA treats software R&D in its calculations for gross domestic product (GDP) and other metrics, the analysis finds that the share of business R&D coming from software increased from 20 percent in 2006 to 32 percent in 2016, a 60 percent increase. The authors also look at longer-term trends in business R&D expenditures on software, as well as an analysis of software R&D in manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries.       As can be seen in the chart above, most business R&D is in manufacturing industries, and manufacturing industries continue to make up the majority of the growth in overall business R&D investment. The majority of software R&D is performed in non-manufacturing industries. Although manufacturing industries represent a relatively small portion of overall software R&D,…

Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched a new effort to streamline the state’s workforce development programs. The $175 million Workforce Development Initiative will consolidate the state’s fragmented workforce development funding opportunities. Using the state’s 10 regional economic development councils (REDC’s) to suggest and prioritize projects, the initiative will offer awards in three competitive categories: public-private partnerships that expand infrastructure and capacity for state universities to meet employer needs; programs to expand employer investment in workforce pipelines; and, workforce solutions that provide flexible funding for innovative workforce development projects such as those targeting advanced industries or underrepresented populations. The program will complement the state’s regional economic development council (REDC) program, a similar effort that pools together disjointed state resources. As part of the new initiative, each of the state’s 10 REDCs will recommend workforce projects that align with each council’s economic development strategic planning priorities. The Workforce…